Tag Archives: unified consciousness

CHAPTER 13. “I” CONSCIOUSNESS

It is worth repeating the conclusion of the previous chapter, since it gives us a basis for understanding ourselves in the universe: the selfhood of our self-reference is determined by a complex hierarchy, but our consciousness is the consciousness of Being, which lies beyond the subject-object division. There is no other source of consciousness in the universe. The self of self-reference and the consciousness of primordial consciousness together create what we call self-consciousness.

In a sense, we are rediscovering an ancient truth. It is truly wonderful that humanity has always potentially known the origin of self-awareness from a complex hierarchy. This knowledge, common to many cultures, has manifested itself in different places and at different times in the archetypal image of a snake biting its own tail (Fig. 34).

Rice. 34.
Ouroboros (From the book “The Origin and History of Consciousness” by Eric von Neumann, Princeton University Press, 1982)

It is the appearance of the world of manifestation that leads us to the experience of a self or subject separate from the objects of appearance. That is, subject and object simultaneously appear in the initial collapse of the quantum state of the mind-brain. As the romantic poet John Keate intuitively surmised, “See the world, if you will, as a place to make souls.”

Without the immanent world of manifestation there would be no soul, no self that experiences itself as separate from the objects it perceives.

For the sake of convenience, we can introduce a new term to describe this situation. Before collapse, the subject is not differentiated from the archetypes of objects of experience – physical or mental. Collapse causes the subject-object division, and this leads to the primary awareness of the “I am” situation, which we will call the quantum self. (Of course, we could also say that the awareness of the quantum self causes collapse. Remember the circular nature inherent in self-reference.) Consciousness is identified with the emerging self-reference of its quantum self, in which the unity of the subject is still preserved. The next question is how does our so-called separate self—our unique point of reference for all experience, the individual ego—come into being?

The emergence of the ego

“We cannot escape the fact that the world as we know it is created in order to (and therefore to be able to) see itself,” says mathematician J. Spencer Brown. “But in order to do this, it obviously must first split into at least one state that it sees, and at least one other state that it sees.” The mechanisms of this subject-object division are the doubly fascinating illusions of a complex hierarchy and the identity of the self with the focus of our past experience, which we call the ego. How does this ego-identity arise?

I have already said that the mind-brain is a dual quantum system and a measuring device. As such it is unique: it is the place where the self-reference of the entire universe takes place. The Universe realizes itself through us . In us, the universe is divided into two – into subject and object. As a result of the mind-brain’s observation, consciousness collapses the quantum wave function and completes the von Neumann circuit. We resolve the von Neumann chain problem by recognizing that consciousness collapses the wave function, acting self-referentially rather than dualistically. How does a self-correlating (self-referential) system differ from a simple combination of a quantum object and a measuring device? The answer to this question is critical.

The brain’s measuring device, like all other measuring devices, records in memory every collapse – that is, every experience that arises in response to a certain stimulus. However, in addition to this, if the same or similar stimulus is presented again, the classical recording apparatus of the brain replays the past memory; this secondary playback becomes a secondary stimulus for the quantum system, which then responds to it. The classical system measures a new response, and so on. This re-interaction of dimension leads to a fundamental change in the quantum mind-brain system: it is no longer regenerative.

Each previously experienced, learned reaction increases the likelihood of repeating the same reaction. This leads to the following: the behavior of the quantum mind-brain system in relation to a new, unlearned stimulus is similar to the behavior of any other quantum system. However, when a stimulus becomes learned, the probability increases that after the measurement is completed, the quantum mechanical state of the binary system will correspond to the state of the previous memory. In other words, learning (or past experience) tunes the brain-mind.

This explanation is, of course, a theoretical analysis within the existing mind-brain model based on the idea of ​​simple behavioral conditioning. Before a response to a stimulus becomes conditioned, before we experience it for the thousandth time, the pool of probability from which consciousness selects our response includes mental states common to all people in all times and places. As learning progresses, conditioned responses gradually begin to gain more weight than others. It is the process of developing learned, conditioned behavior of the individual mind.

Once a task is learned, in any situation involving it, the probability that the corresponding memory will trigger the conditioned response approaches 100%. In this limiting case, the behavior of a dual quantum system and a measuring device becomes almost classical. Here we see an analogue of Bohr’s correspondence principle as applied to the mind-brain. In the extreme case of new experience, the brain-mind’s response is creative. As learning progresses, the probability of a conditioned response increases increasingly until—in the extreme case of endlessly repeated experience—the response becomes completely conditioned, as behaviorism claims. This is important because classical conditioning, as postulated by behaviorism, becomes a special case of a more general quantum system.

Many learned programs accumulate at fairly early stages of individual physical development and determine the behavior of the brain-mind – despite the fact that unconditioned quantum reactions remain available for new creative experience (especially in response to unknown stimuli). But when the creative potential of the quantum component is not harnessed, the complex hierarchy of interacting components of the mind-brain essentially becomes a simple hierarchy of learned, classical programs: mental programs react to each other in a well-defined hierarchy. At this stage, creative uncertainty about “who chooses” conscious experience disappears; we begin to accept the existence of a separate individual self (ego) that exercises choice and has free will.

To better understand this idea, suppose that a learned stimulus comes to the brain-mind. In response, the quantum system and its measuring device become a coherent superposition, but with a significant bias in favor of the learned response. The memory of a classical computer also responds with learned programs associated with a given stimulus. After the collapse event associated with the primary experience, a number of secondary collapse processes occur. In response to classical learned programs, a quantum system evolves into relatively unambiguous states, each of which strengthens and collapses. This series of processes leads to secondary experiences that have a distinct quality, such as habitual motor activity, thoughts (such as “I did it”), etc. The learned programs that promote secondary events are still part of the complex hierarchy, but following them we find a break in their causal chain that corresponds to the role of the quantum system and its collapse by nonlocal consciousness. However, this discontinuity is obscured and interpreted as an act of free will of the (pseudo-) self; this is then followed by the (false) identification of the non-local subject with the limited individual self associated with learned programs. This is what we call ego. It is clear that the ego is our classical self .

Of course, our consciousness is ultimately one and is on the transcendental level, which we now recognize as the undisturbed level. However, within physical space-time (from the point of view of the classical programs of our mind-brain) we become obsessed with an individual self-identity: the ego. From within, being little able to discover the complex hierarchical nature of our system, we pretend to free will in order to hide our artificial limitations. The limitation arises from taking the view of learned programs causally influencing each other. In ignorance we identify with a limited version of the cosmic subject: we conclude: I am this body-mind.

As a real subject of experience (non-local consciousness), I operate from outside the system – transcending my brain-mind, which is localized in space-time – from behind the veil of the complex hierarchy of my brain-mind systems. My separateness—my ego—appears only as the apparent representative of the free will of this cosmic Self, obscuring the lack of continuity in space-time that represents the collapse of the quantum mind-brain state. In connection with the question of individuality, a quote from a poem by Wallace Stevens is relevant:
They said: “You have a blues guitar,
You don’t play things as they are.”
The man answered: “Things as they are
Change on a blues guitar.”

Things as they are (such as pure, undivided cosmic consciousness) appear as a separate, individualized ego; they are modified by the blues guitar of a simple hierarchy of learned programs of the individual mind-brain.

However, the separate self is only a secondary face of consciousness, since the non-local, creative potency of consciousness and the changeability of the quantum mind never completely disappears. They continue to be present in the primary quantum modality of the self.

Classical and Quantum Self

Psychologist Fred Attneave defines the ego as follows: “…stored information about past states of consciousness can be returned to consciousness. Thus, it becomes possible for consciousness to see its own reflection – although always (to break the metaphor slightly) with a time delay. I believe that the ego should be defined in this way.”

Note in particular the time delay that Attnive mentions: this is the reaction time between the collapse of a space-time event (the onset of a quantum mode) and the verbalized secondary classical mode, or introspection-based ego experience. There is impressive evidence to support this view of the timing of introspection.

Neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet, neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein and their collaborators discovered the intriguing phenomenon of introspection time in patients undergoing brain surgery at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco. (In brain surgery, patients can remain awake because there is no pain.) Libet and Feinstein measured the time it took for a tactile stimulus, transmitted through the nerves as pulsed electrical activity, to reach the brain. It was approximately 0.01 s. However, Libet and Feistein found that the patient did not verbally report awareness of the stimulus until almost half a second later. In contrast, the behavioral response of such subjects (pressing a button or saying the word “ready”) required only 0.1-0.2 s.

Libet’s experiments support the idea that the normal classical ego-self arises from processes of secondary awareness of conscious experience. Almost half a second between the behavioral response and the verbal message is the time required for secondary awareness to be processed; it is the (subjective) reaction time required for “I am that” introspection. Our preoccupation with secondary processes (indicated by time lag) makes it difficult to recognize our quantum self and experience the pure mental states available at the quantum level of our functioning. Many meditative practices are designed to eliminate the delay in time and directly connect us with these pure mental states in their suchness (in Sanskrit – tathata). Available (albeit preliminary) evidence suggests that meditation reduces the time delay between primary and secondary processes.

In addition, there is indirect evidence that a decrease in time delay is accompanied by elevated experiences. George Leonard reported the sublime experiences of athletes. For example, in baseball, when a player in the outfield manages to catch a particularly difficult ball, his excitement may not be the result of success (as is commonly believed), but a consequence of reduced reaction time (making it easier for him to catch the ball), which allows him to catch a glimpse of his quantum self. Outstanding ball catching success and excitement occur simultaneously—essentially, each causes the other. Maslow’s data on peak experiences – the immediate transcendental experience of the self as rooted in the unity and harmony of cosmic Being (for example, the creative eureka experience) – can also be explained in terms of the reduced reaction time and quantum self of the experiencer.

The temporary delay of secondary introspection creates the possibility of feeling the continuity of the experience of our ego consciousness. Our so-called stream of consciousness is the result of mindless, introspective chatter. (At what price do we pay for the accumulation of experience!) Consciousness is divided into subject and object through the collapse of the quantum wave function of the mind-brain. Collapse represents an event of discontinuity in space and time, but we one-sidedly experience the subject-object division in the continuous, classical modality of the ego. We are almost unaware of the immediacy of experience available in the quantum mode, which T. S. Eliot in one of his poems called the “real estate point”:
Neither from there, nor there; at the point of real estate
there is a dance,
But neither stop nor movement.
And don’t call it fixity,
Where past and future gather…
…Except for a point, a point of real estate,
There will be no dance, and there is only dance.

Maya is now explained . Maya is not the immanent world, or even the ego. Real maya is separateness. To feel and think that we are truly separate from the whole is an illusion. We have achieved the ultimate goal of quantum functionalism – the explanation of our separate self. With the classical learned programs forming an apparently simple hierarchy, consciousness acquires an ego (the self-definition of “I am that”), which is identified with the learned programs and the individual experience of the individual brain-mind. Such a separate self, as Sperry suspected, has aspects of an emergent phenomenon. It arises from the introspective interaction of our learned programs, derived from our experience in the world, but there is one peculiarity. The separate self has no free will beyond the free will of the quantum self and ultimately the unified consciousness.

I hope you now understand the essence of quantum functionalism. While conventional mind-brain theories eschew the notion of consciousness as a disturbance, quantum functionalism begins with consciousness; at the same time he reclaims the behavioral account of brain-mind action as a limiting case and even agrees with materialists that ego free will is a fraud. However, the new theory is much more versatile as an aid to understanding the brain-mind, since it also recognizes the quantum modality of the self.

Materialist psychologists believe only in the ego – if at least in it. Many of them would say that there is no quantum self. However, imagine what if there was a drug that could separate the quantum self. What would life be like? This question is played out in the following parable.

Love for classical mechanics: a parable

Once upon a time there was a woman who believed in classical mechanics and classical logic. She became uncomfortable with all the talk about idealistic philosophy, mysticism and the like that many of her friends, and sometimes even her husband, had.

In her relationships with people, she could not understand what they wanted. She had always been good to her parents, but they wanted her to be involved. She didn’t know what they meant. She enjoyed sex with her husband, but he talked too much about love and trust. They were just words. What is the use of such words? Sometimes, lying awake after sex with the man who was her husband, she felt herself filled with feelings of emotional tenderness. She imagined that they were of the same variety as those that sometimes made her parents silently look at her with tears in their eyes. And she hated this sentimentality.

She couldn’t understand why some of her friends were looking for meaning in their lives. Some of them constantly talked about love and aesthetics. She had to hold back her laughter so as not to offend them, but she knew they were naive. She believed that there was no love other than sex. However, sometimes, when she unconsciously looked at the ocean, she was overcome by a feeling of oneness with the vastness of the ocean. Then she would lose a few moments of her existence and plunge into love. She feared such moments and hated them.

Several times she tried to talk about her worries, but those she confided in spoke soothingly about her inner quantum self, beyond her ordinary ego. She would never have believed in something so elusive. Even if she had some kind of inner self, she did not need it at all. Then, one day, she heard about the discovery of a drug that could separate a person from the quantum self. She found the man who discovered the drug.

“Will your remedy allow me to enjoy sex without sentimental feelings about love?”

“Yes,” said the man who had the drug.

“I can’t stand the insecurity of trusting people. I would rather count on mutual concessions and confirming words with deeds. Will your tool allow me to live my life without having to trust people?”

“Yes,” replied the inventor of the drug.

“If I take your remedy, will I be able to relax in the beauty of the ocean without having to deal with the feelings of so-called universal love?”

“Always,” her interlocutor replied.

“Then your remedy is for me,” she said, drinking the potion greedily.

Time passed. Her husband was beginning to sense a change in her. She behaved in much the same way, but, according to him, he could no longer feel her vibes. Then, one day, she told him that she had taken a drug to turn off her quantum self. He immediately found the man who gave his wife the drug. He wanted his wife to regain her quantum creativity.

The man who gave his wife the drug listened to him for a while and then said: “Let me tell you a story. Once there was a man who felt unbearable pain in his leg. Doctors could not find a cure and eventually decided to amputate. Waking up after long hours spent under anesthesia, the patient saw the doctor looking at him questioningly. Still not feeling too well, he asked the doctor: “So how?”

“I have some good news and some bad news for you. Let’s start with the bad ones. We cut off the wrong leg.” The patient looked at him blankly, but the doctor hastened to console him. “And now the good news, it turned out that your bad leg is not so bad. It doesn’t need to be amputated. You will be able to use it.”

The husband looked puzzled. The man who gave his wife the drug continued: “Your wife did not like the creative uncertainty of life that comes with the quantum self, so she freed herself from it. She preferred to walk on one leg. This is bad news for you. But now there is good news. I do have a remedy for husbands like you. I can train her to have the mental behavior you want from her. After my training, she will give you both tea and sympathy.”

The husband was delighted. And so it was done. His wife seemed the same again. At times she whispered tender words of love, as she had done before she took the drug. But her “soulful” husband still could not sense her vibes.

He went again to the man who gave his wife the potion and taught her loving behavior. “Behavior alone does not bring me real satisfaction. I want something inexpressible – I want to feel her vibes,” the husband complained.

The man said, “There is only one possibility. I can give you the drug and then train you like I trained your wife.”

Since there was no other alternative, the husband agreed. And since then this couple lived happily. No one in their city had ever seen a more loving couple. They were even elected life members of the local Walden II chapter, the first time such an honor had been bestowed.

Don’t worry, such a drug will never be found. At the same time, constant and optional behavioral, cultural, political and social conditioning does function like the chemical drug in the parable, holding back the potential that the quantum self offers us. So the next question is how can we take responsibility for the emerging knowledge that we are more than materialism admits? Where do we go next? This is the topic of part 4.

The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami

Contents

PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS