Posted on 07 November 2024, 9:17

What are we, physical body or personal consciousness? Most of us would agree it’s the conscious self. The self does the knowing, the feeling, the deciding, the loving, the hating. It makes us who we are. It goes to the essence of our identity. The body can be viewed as a kind of housing with which it interacts in a wonderfully felicitous way.

Where does our consciousness come from? Materialists say from the brain. Electrochemical events in the brain create consciousness. In contrast, dualists think the brain transmits consciousness but doesn’t generate it. For dualists like me, the conscious self, or soul, is different from the physical brain.

For dualists, the brain can be compared to a TV that tunes into specific electromagnetic waves and converts them into image and sound. The brain doesn’t generate consciousness. Rather, the brain is the self’s instrument.

When the brain goes bad, as in Alzheimer’s or a severe injury to the head, the self is not damaged, though it appears to be. It can’t navigate the physical world in a normal healthy way, in the same way that a computer with a virus can’t work properly. The electromagnetic waves don’t stop or slow down when they bombard the computer. They are in no way damaged. In the same way the self is not damaged by a dying or damaged brain. It’s just trapped inside and dependent on a failing instrument and can’t manifest itself in the normal way.

At death the instrument, the brain, fails absolutely. What happens to the conscious self at death according to dualism? It frees itself from the brain and moves on. This freeing is what constitutes death.

Materialists disagree. But they can’t account for the brain’s ability to create consciousness; they call it “the hard problem,” which to date remains “the insoluble problem.”

Materialists can’t explain how paranormal phenomena arise either. Materialists usually dismiss the paranormal as superstition; they often deny it even exists. For them, the afterlife is another superstition. It never happened or can happen. Dualists, however, have no problem accommodating the afterlife. The “hard problem” disappears. The consciousness that we all have—just is. It doesn’t owe its existence to the brain. Thus it doesn’t have to suffer the same fate as the brain at death. It can cut and run. And it does. It survives death.

Stafford Betty, Professor of Religious Studies, CSUB, (ret) is the author of When Did You Ever Become Less by Dying?  and Heaven and Hell Unveiled. His latest novel, Guardians of the Afterworld is published by White Crow Books.

Stafford can be found at www.staffordbetty.com.

Michael,

Your description of the lock-step closed-minded dedication to materialism on the part of consensus establishment science and academia is well taken. Orthodox science chooses to continue essentially a farce, totally blind to the boatload of evidence accumulated over many years of dedicated research into the paranormal that is ignored as fraudulent or mistaken on purely brainwashed ideological grounds, ignoring both the evidence and the very strong philosophical/metaphysical arguments for the primacy of consciousness in reality, and the existence a mobile center of consciousness which can leave the body and brain under unusual circustances, make observations, then return to reenter the brain through which it was evidently manifesting in the physical. During its journey out of the body (in phenomena such as NDE OBEs), this mobile center of consciousness then sometimes makes observations that have been be checked and verified by independent investigators to be excellent empirical evidence - that is, what is called veridical evidence. 

The philosophical/metaphysical arguments referred to probably begin with the formulation from simple self-observation of the so-called “Hard Problem” of consciousness, where it is clearly seen that the properties and aspects of consciousness such as awareness, subjective awareness, qualia (for instance what it is like to perceive in consciousness the color red), thought, agency or volition, etc.), are all completely immaterial and nonphysical, making the barrier between physical brain neurological processes, the physical interactions of its billions olf neurons and synapses, completely incapable of generating consciousness. Consciousness and the physical interactions of neurons in the brain are in fact in completely existentially separate domains or levels of reality. 

That fact leaves open the interaction problem of the Dualism philosophy or theory of consciousness, but as can be seen the actual data clearly points to there being several possible solutions to this problem. Intervention by fiat of the “powers that be”, the Designer(s) of our reality, is obviously one of the possible solutions. This then brings in yet another paradigm-breaking field on the edge of establishment science, the great amount of evidence for life and our very Universe with its fine-tuned for the existence of life laws of physics having a designing Intelligence behind it. Very great amounts of evidence have been accumulated also for the strong influence of Designing Intelligence in the evolution of life, in contrary to the bankrupt materialist Darwinian random-walk random genetic variation + natural selection theory of evolution. This field of ID is another entire area of strong evidence against materialism, and due to limitations of length won’t be further gone into here. 

In conclusion, due to the closed minded ideological materialism of mainstream science and academia all this evidence to the contrary is totally ignored. That is severely holding back the progress of science.

David

Coincidentally, yesterday I was looking for something specific from materialist consciousness studies and turned up article of explanation of the field from the NIH titled “What Neuroscientists Think, and Don’t Think, About Consciousness”.

In the article there’ a sentence that reads “There is no consensus about how it is generated, or how best to approach the question, but all investigations start with the incontrovertible premise that consciousness comes about from the action of the brain.”

Or to state the same idea as it would appear in another field: “We begin our studies from the indisputable fact that the earth is flat.”

I read around in the field after that and it doesn’t get much better. It’s almost amusing that they could be so certain that they’re working at the limits of the question. Like, it’s not even real science, then, is it?

Dear David,

To reply to your opening para regarding “the way our world obviously works”, it is certainly true that we experience ‘causation’ in the sense of there being a certain objective ordering structure to ‘the way things work’, but as to whether this is ‘physical’ or not is the very question under review. Similarly, asserting a ‘de facto physical environment’ is to simply assume that the question under review is settled. Again, to pick up once more from where I last concluded, our immediate experience is not physical at all but entirely mental. We only get at the so-called ‘physical’ through a process of projective abstraction, by intrinsically and reflexively positing that the cup on the table in front of me is a physical cup on a physical table objectively ‘out there’. But, again, we never get at this so-called physicality, nor can we establish its reality.  Further, although we certainly have the experience of being in a physical body, this is, in terms of the immediacy of our experience, the wrong way round. Rather, the body ‘exists’ in our field of awareness.  Similarly, to assume the physicality of the brain, whether as a ‘generator’, ‘receiver’ or ‘reducing valve’ of consciousness, is to fall into the same problem, for the brain is never known to us as a physical object but rather as a perceived form in awareness.  In this sense, the “observed close correlation between brain physical neurological phenomena and mental phenomena” is in fact a close correlation between two different types of mental phenomena.

Again, in all this, the dream analogy is a useful point of reference, in which the experienced dream reality has a sense of ‘reality’ of ‘objectivity’, if somewhat fluid in character, yet is not material for all that nor supports a dualist model of understanding in which the subjective center of awareness is ‘mind’ and the dream body and dream environment are ‘matter’.  It may have that appearance and support that inference, but is nevertheless not the case.  Of course, the critical difference between the dream case and the waking or NDE OBE cases is that the former is solipsistic and the latter are not.

Nevertheless, and to repeat from my prior concluding passage, it can be useful to speak of matter in a kind of conventional way and I certainly have no objection to that.  In that sense, one might employ a kind of dualist language or description for the sake of convenience within a supervening idealism, so long as one is not seduced by such a usage into considering its categories as representing what is ultimately real.

A point you raised in your earlier comments that I didn’t reply to then is pertinent once again in your latest two replies below.  Specifically, you speak of the person having an NDE as “some sort of mobile center of consciousness that must be immaterial”.  This is critical to the ‘mind-matter’ dualist argument you are forwarding, in which the ‘matter’ is the physical body and the ‘mind’ is the “mobile center of consciousness” you discuss.  However, what you term a ‘mobile center of consciousness’ is found in the predominant evidence of the literature not to be a disembodied consciousness but rather a subtle embodiment.  In other words, there is no neat demarcation between ‘material’ body and ‘mental’ consciousness, but rather between consciousness and multiple bodies, noon all but one of which are decidedly non-physical. Of course, these subtle embodiments are just as much perceived forms in our awareness as our physical embodiment is.

Thus, Raymond Moody, in ‘Life After Life’ (1976), provides, as a composite summary of a multitude of NDE experiences (note the final sentence):

“Despite the wide variation in the circumstances surrounding close calls with death and in the types of persons undergoing them, it remains true that there is a striking similarity among the accounts of the experiences themselves. In fact, the similarities among various reports are so great that one can easily pick out about fifteen separate elements which recur again and again in the mass of narratives that I have collected. On the basis of these points of likeness, let me now construct a brief, theoretically ‘ideal’ or ‘complete’ experience which embodies all of the common elements, in the order in which it is typical for them to occur.
A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.
After a while, he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a ‘body,’ but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind.” (pp.21-25)

Similarly, Kenneth Ring, in ‘Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of Near-Death Experience’ (1980), concludes his survey of a large body of evidence and testimony (note the final line):

“In making my case for an out-of-body interpretation for the initial stages of the core experience, I have argued that there is abundant empirical evidence pointing to the reality of out-of-body experiences; that such experiences conform to the descriptions given by our near-death experiencers; and that there is highly suggestive evidence that death involves the separation of a second body—a double—from the physical body.” (p.232)

Robert Crookall, in his ‘Out of the Body Experiences’ (1970), which treats both NDEs and OBEs, goes into so much extensive detail on the ‘double’ or subtle embodiment that it is impossible to even begin to summarize his presentation.

As for OBEs more generally, outside of the special conditions in which they are associated with NDEs, one might cite the extensive introduction by Hereward Carrington in Sylvan Muldoon & Hereward Carrington, ‘The Projection of the Astral Body’ (1929):

“The Astral Body may be defined as the Double, or the ethereal counterpart of the physical body, which it resembles and with which it normally coincides. It is thought to be composed of some semi-fluidic or subtle form of matter, invisible to the physical eye. It has, in the past, been spoken of as the etheric body, the mental body, the spiritual body, the desire body, the radiant body, the resurrection body, the double, the luminous body, the subtle body, the fluidic body, the shining body, the phantom, and by various other names.” (p.16)

Finally, apart from physical embodiment, NDE OBEs, as well as OBEs more generally, one may also speak of subtle embodiment in the context of discarnate existence proper.  For instance, Robert Crookall, in his exhaustive work ‘The Supreme Adventure’ (1961) summarizes, based on an extensive body of testimony, in a diagram on p.73 four ‘bodies’: the physical body, the vehicle of vitality (which decomposes with the physical on our death), the soul body (termed in other sources the astral body) and the spiritual body (termed in other sources the mental body), these last two being associated with discarnate experience proper.  There may well be more than these last two discarnately experienced bodies, as Myers discusses in ‘The Road to Immortality’ (1933), but two is sufficient here, as what distinguishes between their respective embodiments is what is termed the ‘second death’, treated for instance by Paul Beard in ch.9 of his ‘Living On’ (1980).  The phenomenon of the ‘second death’, which is analogous to the ‘first death’ (the death of the physical body), sheds additional light on the non-uniqueness of physical death and thus the non-uniqueness of physical embodiment, particularly with respect to any ‘material’ or dualist character.

Best,

Paul

Paul,

The way our world obviously works in the now is where we must start with. In this world physical causation is a fact regardless of whatever its esoteric real ultimate nature may be. We deal with our world through our experiences and actions in a de facto physical environment. In this world the mental realm (or consciousness) evidently according to all evidence while in body is manifested via the brain. We can rule out the brain actually generating consciousness through several strong paranormal evidential and philosophical arguments against it and against materialism in general. And formulations like the Hard Problem of consciousness strongly indicate that mind and consciousness and subjective awareness, etc. are absolutely not physical.

This then leaves the only other option to explain our existence here and now - in life our consciousness or spirit must somehow inhabit the brain neurological structures and interact with them so as to result in the observed close correlation between brain physical neurological phenomena and mental phenomena. This observed close correlation is the main evidence materialist neurology uses to try to prove the brain is the generator of consciousness. But as mentioned above the brain neurological structures are absolutely certainly not the origin of our consciousness. 

Many NDE OBEs exist, verified through veridicality found by investigation. They are direct experiences of the NDEr temporarily leaving the physical body as some sort of mobile center of consciousness that must be immaterial since it can float through walls and ceilings. Typically it remains hovering above its body for a time, then moves into some other higher level of spiritual existence, only to eventually return into the body of course.

Now notice that observing and analyzing a little the actual human experience and situation in the physical world strongly indicates a situation where human spirits or souls are ultimately mobile centers of consciousness inhabiting and interacting with the brain while embodied, but can under some circumstances separate from the body and brain only to eventually return and be interviewed about their experiences. 

It should be noted that the paranormal phenomenon of verified reincarnation cases also fit into this analysis as another related area of human experience indicating interactive Dualism. 

We keep getting back to the fact that very much actual human observation and experience in the de facto physical world (whatever the “physical” may ultimately be according to various philosophies) is exactly as would be expected from the interactional Dualist model.

This then leaves the competing philosophies and models of mind such as the various brands of Idealism and Monism the task of also explaining the previously outlined facts. Good luck. Why should a reality where absolutely everything is mental or spiritual including the apparent material world choose to operate in such an false but elaborate way according to and mimicing a wrong model/philosophy of mind? If true, this would seem to have to be an elaborate charade or deliberate illusion for some high purpose dictated by the “powers that be”.

If this last observation turns out to be the truth, that interactive Dualism is just a local model by which most of the world behaves and which does not rule the wider realm of existence, then interactive Dualism is still extremely important to humans because it is a model by which so much actual human experience unfolds in this physical world we all inhabit. As a practical matter we should know how our physical world of matter and human persons really work on a basic level, even if that level is perhaps only the first of several existential levels of reality.

You say, “Dualism has its points of philosophic attraction, but it is not consistent ultimately with our own immediate experience, which is entirely mental, or with the best testimony of discarnate-related literature”.

Let’s look at some actual case data in a little detail. A good rule is that actual evidence trumps theory every time. The following is the beginning of Pam Reynolds’ NDE OBE in her own words. It is unequevocal that her direct experience was of literally separating from and leaving her physical body (which she was evidently previously “inhabiting”) to then temporarily remain in the physical world, float above her body and observe it and the physicians working on it, followed sometimes by travel through some sort of tunnel into a spiritual realm, only to return. There are many other cases of veridical NDE OBEs like it, although Reynolds’ is especially detailed and complete. In these cases there is no indication of or need to invoke even more transcendental states of existence. The experiences speak for themselves of the immaterial human spirit and consciousness manifesting in the physical world via inhabiting and somehow interacting with the physical body especially the brain, and then under extraordinary circumstances usually of trauma, leaving the body as some sort of mobile center of consciousness.  Such experiences with confirmatory veridical features are a direct demonstration of the interactional Dualist theory of mind.  

From Rivas, Titus; Dirven, Anny; Smit, Rudolf. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences (p. 152). International Association for Near-Death Studies Kindle edition:

“I literally feel myself rip out of my body, and I’m standing next to the EKG unit. Next to me, on the other side, is Grace Lim, the only doctor who flagged my file. Actually, . . . I wasn’t standing. I was floating a few inches above the floor. Then, amazingly, I floated out of the OR and down the back hallways to see Adina with Tessie, the nanny, in the Labor and Delivery Room.

I was hoping that the brutality about to happen to my body was over, but I came back too soon. My listless body, with eyes open, was still on the table just waiting for them to start the operation. I could see that my spirit wasn’t planted on the ground. And I could feel it. It felt as if I was as light as a feather. My spirit was actually floating, and I knew my spirit wasn’t in my body. I felt the opposite when I looked at my body on the table. I could feel the heaviness of my body on the operating table as life was getting sucked out of me. My body was just dying.”

And you denigrate the Occam’s Razor principle. The best statement of Occam’s Razor is that it is the principle of parsimony, that the simplest explanation of a given phenomenon is most likely to be correct, or in other words that the fewer assumptions you have to make the closer is the explanatory theory likely to be to the truth. And it turns out, if you make enough unsupported assumptions, you can prove basically anything. Auxiliary hypotheses is another name for unsupported assumptions. Do you deny that Monism and Idealism have to have a number of auxiliary hypotheses added to them in  order to explain the above sort of cases, and that interactional Dualism has to have nearly none?

Dear David,

Regarding the principle of parsimony (Occam’s Razor), I simply don’t see this is as a binding argument.  It is, at best, a non-binding suggestion regarding good practice.  That is all.  Relative complexity is, to a certain degree, in the eye of the beholder.  Sometimes the simpler explanation is too simple and false or partial in consequence.  Sometimes more rounded complexity is needed to fully capture a matter.  By way of example, no one considers James Clerk Maxwell to have bungled the job because he couldn’t reduce his four canonical equations of electromagnetism down to one, or even two.  So it goes.

Nevertheless, accepting your premise, and staying within the confines of discussing idealism vis-à-vis dualism, it would seem evident on its face that a view that posits two ‘substances’ – consciousness and matter – is less parsimonious than one that posits only one – consciousness alone.  Further, if one tentatively accepts the view that ‘non-physical’, ‘discarnate’ domains are of consciousness and in consciousness, as per the quotes I offered in my originating post – quotes that could be multiplied from the literature – but that this physical world is comprised of both matter and consciousness, again, this is less parsimonious than the view that all domains of existence – ‘incarnate’ and ‘discarnate’, ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’ – are of consciousness and in consciousness.

All this is very much secondary to the principal point I brought up in my previous post, namely that you are presupposing, in your replies, this ‘stuff’ called matter, which forms the first of two ‘substances’ inherent in the dualist position that you (and Stafford) are forwarding.  Without the reality of matter, dualism, along with materialism, is undermined.  One of the strange curiosities of physics is that under classical and relativistic physics, the ‘stuff’ called matter is measured by an ascribed property ‘mass’, which is only measured indirectly according to either inertial behavior or behavior under a gravitational field.  In other words, matter, far from being this concrete ‘stuff’ is an abstraction known only indirectly.  Under quantum physics, matter fares even more poorly, dissolving – like the Cheshire Cat – into waves, fields and probability distributions.  The problem is worse than this, however, for philosophically, all we know of ‘matter’ or of ‘stuff’ – as Kant saw clearly – are perceptions and sensations, apprehensible to our awareness.  We never get, and in principle can never get, at whatever might be ‘behind’ these perceptions and sensations.  Thus matter – that bedrock ‘stuff’ on which both materialism and dualism are mounted – far from being the most concrete, is in fact doubly abstracted in our scientific and philosophic experience.

As for your concern for “all these complicated ‘arisings and appearances’”, which, you suggest, require “numerous auxiliary hypotheses implementing additional complicated features and functions of Idealism” I would simply say that first, your description in that para implicitly assumes your position, namely that there is an independent ‘body and brain’ out there in physicality for consciousness to be separated from – the very point undermined by an analytic study of idealism as per Berkeley, Goode and others (among contemporary writers, one might also mention Bernardo Kastrup, Göran Backlund and Mark Gober) – and, second, that the dream analogy provides a useful point of reference in which all sorts of ‘arisings and appearances’ may, in a completely convincing manner, be fashioned from the dreaming mind, having the appearance of vivid, objective physicality and yet being nothing of the sort.

The description you give regarding NDE OBEs recalls to my mind the more general principle of OBEs as described by seasoned OBE explorers such as Jurgen Ziewe or Mike Marable who speak quite plainly regarding ‘moving’ between ‘layers’ or ‘levels’ of reality by a ‘shift in consciousness’.  As Ziewe comments “the slightest shift in Consciousness can transport us into a completely different world” [‘Vistas of Infinity’, p.165]  Often, as both Ziewe and Marable explain, this shift is achieved through a kind of symbolic enactment.  From Ziewe: “Although we can enter higher dimensions via a shift in Consciousness, we can also literally travel towards them. As seen in my previous report, people simply crossed a bridge to move into the next dimension. In my previous book, ‘Multidimensional Man’, I initially used buildings, and by using the stairs in order to reach the top floor I sometimes found myself in a higher dimension. On other occasions, I would try to break through a ceiling to advance. My conclusion was that by using such powerful ‘feeling visualisation’ we trick Consciousness into relocating us on a higher level.” [‘Vistas of Infinity’, p.134]  As Ziewe further observes, “symbols can be deployed as focus points to shift awareness from one state to the next.” [Ibid.]

Similarly, Marable, who often gets involved in ‘rescue work’ while out of body, describes helping a group to shift to a ‘higher level’: “I was surrounded by what I guess to be about fifteen of them. I informed them that I could get them out of this place if they wanted to come. I told them to follow me, and I looked around for a building with a light source. I have noticed that it can be no more illumination than what a single candle might put out, but any amount of light is helpful. I find it to be the only reliable indicator for places where I can exit. When I arrive at a light source, I look for stairs or, even better, elevators so I can move out of these locations by going upward. Some who travel can do it with their mind.” [‘How To Have A Good Life After You’re Dead’]  [As an aside, there are some great dialogue videos between Ziewe and Marable here: ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y08Bypf3BzA&list=PL5wjegQ74FiMAJrHtEUAfLIsSZd_HI74b]

Again, what is in play is a kind of symbolic enactment – where upward movement or greater illumination are active metaphors for moving into finer grades of existence – that has real effects in altering one’s consciousness and thereby one’s experienced reality.  In similar vein, the passage through the tunnel into a beautiful, light-filled realm characteristic of the classic NDE OBE, although involuntary – in comparison to the deliberate techniques of Ziewe and Marable – nevertheless has the same association of symbolic enactment of upward movement or greater illumination leading the individual to a finer grade of existence.  In the case of Ziewe and Marable, one is shifting from, say, a lower discarnate level to a higher; in the case of an NDE OBE, one is shifting from the ‘physical’ level to a discarnate level, but the symbolic enactment and associated shift in consciousness and associated experience is fundamentally the same.  The obvious conclusion for why this should be is that the ‘physical’ level of reality, while obviously ‘coarser’, ‘denser’, more ‘resistive’ than other levels and in this sense to be distinguished from them, is nevertheless not fundamentally different in kind, but rather part of the same overarching reality. One doesn’t require dualism to explain the shift in consciousness between different discarnate levels, and in similar measure, one doesn’t require it to explain the shift in consciousness between the ‘physical’ and discarnate levels in an NDE OBE.

Dualism has its points of philosophic attraction, but it is not consistent ultimately with our own immediate experience, which is entirely mental, or with the best testimony of discarnate-related literature.  With that said, it can be useful to speak of matter in a kind of conventional way and I certainly have no objection to that.  In that sense, one might employ a kind of dualist language or description for the sake of convenience within a supervening idealism, so long as one is not seduced by such a usage into considering its categories as representing what is ultimately real.

Best,

Paul

Paul, 

You seem to deliberately avoid engaging with my point about the difficulty for Idealism and Monism imposed by the Occam’s Razor principle of parsimony. You say, regarding an NDE OBE:

“But both bodies, the ‘physical’ and the ‘double’, are not other than arisings and appearances in the field of awareness or consciousness of the individual undergoing an NDE.  In other words, an idealist view can fully accommodate for this scenario without any need to evoke dualism.”

Yes, an Idealist philosophy of mind can be greatly elaborated to accomodate generating the actual complicated experiences of the NDEr in two apparently vivid different realities of the experientially separate worlds of the physical and the mental/spiritual. 

But why all these complicated “arisings and appearances”? Yes, presumably Idealism can do so, but only at the cost of it assuming numerous auxiliary hypotheses implementing additional complicated features and functions of Idealism, that would enable the Idealist metaphysic to arrange a perfect (contradictory to Idealism) illusion during the NDE OBE in which the NDEr experiences a total separation from his body and brain and observation of his body and brain from a physical distance in the physical world, leading sometimes by transportation through a “tunnel” of some sort into another experientially much higher spiritual realm where a great light and presence is encountered, deceased loved ones perhaps encountered, etc. , all while experiencing a “realer than real” greatly enhanced and expanded sense of consciousness, all while the physical brain is dysfunctional. An experience perfectly conforming to interactional Dualism.

A general observation: a lesson from all this is that a great body of evidence always trumps theory (and philosophy). 

If this is a complicated illusion created by Idealism being the correct theory of mind, it is an illusion so compelling that it totally convinces the experiencers and profoundly changes their subsequent lives.

And by the way the NDEr generally doesn’t “experience two bodies” (except during the very beginning of the NDE) a “dual” existence as inhabiting both the moribund physical body and a “light body’ - instead he experiences a process of completely separating from the physical brain and body and experiencing himself now as some sort of mobile center of consciousness, and usually a great reluctance to return to it. This experience and its vividness and “realer than real” nature is exactly what would be expected from interactional Dualism. 

Again, why would an Idealist world reality so elaborately arrange such a thing as the NDE OBE experience, so contravening its true nature?

Anyway, such a complicated set of auxiliary hypotheses surely qualifies Idealism in this context to probably be invalidated as rather unlikely per the well-known Occam’s Razor principle of parsimony, which in the history of science has proved to be very useful in predicting the truth among competing theoretical explanations. 

This major problem with Idealism contrasts with the one main problem of interactive Dualism, which is of course the question of how two supposedly existentially different “substances” can still intricately interact in the brain’s neural structure in order to allow embodiment by human beings. My answer is that the “powers that be” have evidently dictated that there be such an interactional mechanism as a fundamental part of the way our world reality works, by simple fiat, a special case exception from the way 99% of the world actually works, accomplished simply in order to acheive their desire to enable human life on the Earth, with all its joys and challenges. 

By the way, the so-called “Hard Problem” demonstrates that there is in true fact a fundamental existential gulf between the physical and the mental, which latter consists of all its aspects such as qualia, subjective awareness, thought, intentionality, emotion, etc. The mental and spiritual are totally immaterial and have no physical properties (i.e. the perception of Red has absolutely no weight, physical energy, velocity, physical dimensions, etc.), directly implying some sort of Dualism theory of mind, and directly implying the falsity of Materialism in theory of mind, since there then would be the problem of how can the physical neuronal structure consisting of billions of material neurons and their incredibly complex interactions generate fundamentally existentially immaterial consciousness. 

As I mentioned in my last post, this general criticism also applies to the claim that Monism may be the correct theory of mind, not interactional Dualism.

Thanks,

David Magnan

Dear David,

I can’t do the work of Berkeley, Goode or other authors in the context of a short reply, but let me at least attempt to suggest a reply that might motivate you to dig deeper.  You are presupposing, quite naturally and understandably, in your reply that there are “mental and physical realms”.  But this is precisely what idealist philosophy challenges.  The usual place to start is with an analysis of perception, through which one comes to ascertain that what had been considered an ‘external world’ is in fact an appearance or arising in one’s field of awareness or consciousness.  The body, too, although both persistent and centered upon one’s locus of conscious being identity, is also not other than such an appearance within the full modality of one’s sensorium: vision, sound, touch, …  It is quite possible to bring this into one’s immediate conception-experience through a kind of informed perceptual inversion not unlike the kind of figure-ground inversion that characterizes certain optical illusions.

As you bring up OBEs as a countervailing example to forward a dualist position, the individual experiencing an OBE, say in the context of an NDE, experiences two bodies: the ‘physical’ body lying on the surgical table, say, and the ‘etheric body’ or ‘double’ which occupies, instead of the ‘physical’ body, the immediacy of his experience.  But both bodies, the ‘physical’ and the ‘double’, are not other than arisings and appearances in the field of awareness or consciousness of the individual undergoing an NDE.  In other words, an idealist view can fully accommodate for this scenario without any need to evoke dualism.

A word about monism, the term you bring in, is perhaps necessary.  It is quite as possible to be a materialist monist – in fact, this is the ‘official view’ of modernity – as it is to be an idealist monist.  I find the term monism to very often lead to misunderstanding as it is typically conceived of as a single ultimate ‘thing’ that would disallow relative distinctions, differentiations or multiplicity.  ‘Panentheism’ or ‘non-dualism’ might serve better, but really, any kind of ‘ism’ is going to tend to freeze one’s understanding into rigid categories that are very often unhelpful.  Contra Aristotle, when one grapples with metaphysical understanding, one discovers that there is what might be termed the law of the ‘included middle’: there is an absolute unity that nevertheless admits of differentiation, just as there is a transcendent reality that is nevertheless fully immanent.

A final word regarding your suggestion “Monism could be interpreted as the highest ultimate existential reality which at a lower level subdivides into a subsidiary lower realm of a different local reality.”  This is precisely what the ‘two truths’ doctrine of ultimate and conventional reality developed in both Buddhist and Hindu schools handles.  See, for instance, in Advaita Vedanta, the pāramārthika and vyāvahārika levels and the doctrine of sublation that relates the two.

I could say more on all these points, but let me leave it there.

Best,

Paul

Hats off to David Magnan’s excellent analysis of the pitfalls of philosophical idealism and monism.

I agree that there are philosophical challenges to Dualism, but I feel that there are even greater challenges to Idealism and Monism. 

Idealism, monism and dualism are philosophical ideas that greatly contrast with each other in how they view the nature of reality.

Idealism is the view that all of reality is essentially spirit or consciousness - in other words physical matter/energy is consciousness and is actually the same single  metaphysical transcendental “substance”.

Monism is the idea that all things in existence are part of a single essential oneness or whole. Monism holds that mental and physical phenomena are different manifestations of an ultimate single reality, which is transcendentally above consciousness itself.

But Dualism is the idea that there is a fundamental difference between the mental and physical realms. Dualism maintains that the mind and body are two distinct principles. This just happens to be the way the world we live in actually works at our level of existence.

When the actual empirical evidence from prominent paranormal phenomena indicative of survival and an afterlife is applied to Idealism and Monism, these two philosophies of mind just don’t fit these data - for instance the phenomenon of NDE OBEs, where much veridical evidence attests to the NDEr actually when in deep trauma literally experiencing himself as separating from his physical body and brain as some sort of mobile center of consciousness, to make various observations in the physical and spiritual realms that can be later checked by investigators such as his observations while hovering above of his body being worked on by the resuscitation team, or travel through some sort of “tunnel” or transporting/transitioning means into a spiritual realm where the NDERr may encounter deceased loved ones sometimes not known to be dead. All these experiences are usually in an enhanced form of consciousness and while the physical brain is dysfunctional.

These sort of real existent phenomena clearly imply the existence at least at our level of reality of two fundamentally separate “substances” - the physical, and the spiritual/mental.

To summarize, paranormal phenomena such as NDE OBEs seem to perfectly fit interactive dualism  as a theory of mind, and do not fit idealism and monism, unless these other theories are complicated and extensively modified by a number of auxiliary hypotheses generated to get them to fit the incompatible data. For instance Monism could be interpreted as the highest ultimate existential reality which at a lower level subdivides into a subsidiary lower realm of a different local reality - the interactional dualism by which the world actually works. This would seem to be the unnecessary multiplication or complication of explanations advised as being unlikely by the Occam’s Razor principle of parsimony. Idealism also could be modified by auxiliary hypotheses to make it to better fit the observed interactional dualistic behavior of the human world, but that also runs into the principle of parsimony.

Dear Stafford,

Dualism, whether substance dualism or property dualism, is at best a ‘halfway house’ vis-à-vis materialism (particularly in its typically implicit ‘eliminative’ formulation).  Further, there are significant philosophic challenges to that position, most notably the ‘binding’ or ‘interaction’ problem.  What is even more curious for one such as yourself who has studied widely in the posthumous literature and respects it, in the main, as a vital source of truth, is that the dominant position one finds in that literature is neither materialism – although there is certainly discussion to be found in terms of finer grades of matter comprising discarnate reality – nor dualism, but idealism.  As I was considering a reply to your post, I was dipping into the book ‘Gateway’, communicated via the discarnate Roger Whitby in part to Paul Beard (author of ‘Survival of Death’, ‘Living On’ and other authoritative classics of the field).  The following Q&A exchange (p.44) is precisely on point here:

Q: You seem to say that really there is nothing but consciousness, layer after layer, and that outer material things, there and here (including our bodies, there and here) are really only concretizations of individual and group consciousness at a particular level?
A: Exactly right.
Q: Discarnate teachers often say the next world seems solid, which seems to support a Berkeleyan view.  Comment please?
A: Yes, consciousness is all-pervading: if you like, we are all part of the consciousness of God.

One could easily expand on such an understanding elsewhere in the literature, as when F.W.H. Myers, in his two posthumous books through Geraldine Cummins, refers to his seven levels of reality as “levels of consciousness”, as the discarnate soul as ascending the “ladder of consciousness” and of the highest reality, his final seventh level, as that in which: “The spirit and its various souls are now fused and pass into the Supreme Mind, the Imagination of God, wherein resides the conception of the Whole, of universe after universe, of all states of existence, of past, present and future, of all that has been and all that shall be. Herein is continuous and complete consciousness, the true reality.”

A strong argument may be made that if one respect the posthumous literature, then acceptance of philosophic idealism should naturally follow.  Of course, one hardly needs to go through this particular inferential path.  One could simply, say, read Bishop Berkeley directly.  His ‘Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous’ is perfectly approachable and broadly irrefutable.  Alternatively, one might look East, to, say, Atmananda Krisna Menon and his philosophical heirs, such as Greg Goode.  Goode’s ‘The Direct Path: A User’s Guide’, does much of the same work as Berkeley’s ‘Three Dialogues’ and complements it well.

As a final note, for myself, I find that the emphasis on the overarching reality of Divine Consciousness needs to be balanced with an equal emphasis on the overarching reality of Divine Being.  In Advaitic terms, the perspective of ‘chit’ (Divine Consciousness) needs to be balanced, complemented and completed with the perspective of ‘sat’ (Divine Being).  Taken together, one might speak of the Divine Consciousness/Being as the ‘Divine Presence’.  Here, let me insert an interesting quote from a book and author I’d never heard of, ‘The Nameless Faith’ by Lawrence Hyde:

“The illusion from which we are seeking to extricate ourselves is not that constituted by the realm of space and time, but that which comes from failing to know that realm from the standpoint of a higher vision. We are at length restored to consciousness by awakening in a real universe, the universe created by the One Mind as opposed to that perversion of it which has been created by our egocentric selves. We then see the visible universe as the expression of the immanental life of God, the Divine, in manifestation. In relating ourselves to it, we live objectively within the sphere of the Presence, just as we live in that Presence subjectively in the depths of our mystical being. And in the properly integrated personality the two processes have become one.” (p.59)

This is a fine description of a practice that may be taken up by us here and now: “We then see the visible universe as the expression of the immanental life of God, the Divine, in manifestation. In relating ourselves to it, we live objectively within the sphere of the Presence, just as we live in that Presence subjectively in the depths of our mystical being.”  Or, as Brother Lawrence wrote long ago, practicing the Presence of God.

The above passage by Hyde regarding the Divine Presence and the ‘immanental life of God’ necessarily recalls to my mind the passage from the discarnate William James in Jane Roberts’ ‘The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher’:

“Nowhere have I encountered the furnishings of a conventional heaven or glimpsed the face of God. On the other hand, certainly I dwell in a psychological heaven by earth’s standards, for everywhere I sense a presence, or atmosphere, or atmospheric presence that is well-intentioned, gentle yet powerful and all-knowing. This seems to be a psychological presence of such stunning parts, however, that I can point to no one place and identify it as being there in contrast to being someplace else. At the risk of understating, this presence seems more like a loving condition that permeates existence and from which all existence springs….
While I mention this [atmospheric] presence as itself, so thoroughly does it pervade everything that attempts to isolate it are useless. All theological and intellectual theories are beside the point in the reality of this phenomenon. I know that this presence or loving condition forms itself into me, and into all other personalities; that it lends itself actively to seek my good in the most particular and individual ways; yet that my good is in no way contrary to the good of anyone else, but beneficial.” (pp.162-3)

The problem with both materialism and dualism is that they both assert the reality of ‘matter’, but, upon analysis, matter is found to be a) definitionally tautological, b) epistemically unknowable, and c) metaphysically unreal.  To unpack that would require another long comment and I’ve said enough.

Best,

Paul

It seems that the Tv analogy can be extrapolated as a universal blanket that surrounds all that is, probably in all dimensions.

Humans, ET’s, animals and even plants experience consciousness.  Chandra Bose (1858-1937) did many experiments proving that even plants have a (lower) consciousness and react to many stimuli such as gravity, light, temperature, sound and touch.  And mind? Steve Backster experimented with living shrimps, who were boiled alive in his absence, to which plants stress-reacted in their moment of demise, as they did also when Backster emited evil thoughts to them like ‘I ‘ll put you on fire’...

R Sheldrake has done many experiments with animals and humans (dogs that know when their owner returns home, ESP, telepathy, the feeling of being   stared at from behind etc), all unexplainable but for a wave theory of ‘extended minds’...

Parapsychology with phenomena such as apparitions,  reincarnation (+2500 cases!), mediumistic communications etc, all point to a dualistic world, where consciousness is primal and life is forever evolving.

How can I be so certain?  I had an OBE. 42 years ago.  It still stands out in my mind. Best thing ever!  It was a PROVOKED OBE, by professor Jose Thomas Zeberio (1912-2007), in Belgium in october 1982.  He treated some 12 people this way.

In about 5 to 10 minutes per person, he pushed our mind out of our body, by rubbing this thumb and forefinger, about 30 cm from our hart.  This lead to some of us suddenly hanging against the high ceiling.  It felt as if our shoulders were pushing against it, whilst looking down in elated surprise (!) on ourself and Zeberio on the floor.  Another was instantly on an island where she got married many years ago.  I interviewed some of the 12 participants immediately after their OBE, and again some 30 years later.  They all stood by their life changing experience…

Alas, isn’t all belief personal (consciousness)?

I fully agree. I just would add that basically, everything is consciousness - even our physical body is strictly speaking transformed-down consciousness (God Spirit) because there is nothing else.

The best most complete and concise statement of my own much predominant philosophy and metaphysics that I have ever seen. Of course I view interactional dualism as the most correct philosophy of mind available, especially when considering the great body of evidence for paranormal phenomena indicative of survival and an afterlife.

I argue for this thesis in my 4 German books.
http://www.reinkarnation.de

I absolutely agree with Stafford. It’s the only logical explanation. It is so obvious to me.

So simple, yet so difficult for the skeptics to grasp.  Thanks, Stafford