First I thank Heiner for drawing my
attention to Deepak's recent effort to make sense of what reality might be,
after the many discussions on this list:
Deepak and Menas Kafatos have
recently discussed their collaboration in addressing this subject.
For those of you who do not know about Menas, I draw your attention to the
book he put together years ago, based on a major world-leading
conference he put together on Bell experiments and the Foundations of quantum
physics:
Kafatos
M, editor. Bell's theorem, quantum theory and conceptions of the universe.
Springer Science & Business Media; 2013 Mar 9.
When I looked this up in
scholar.google.com this morning, I was amazed that there were only about 100
citations! ONE of the many important chapters in that book was by Zeilinger's
group, the first seminal paper on what we call GHZ states in
Quantum Information Science and Technology (QuIST). If I search on
Zeilinger, I get more than 5000 citations, but even that understates how
important his work has been in leading the most
advanced mainstream QuIST on earth today. (For example, the world's
first quantum secure "phone call" by satellite was from China to
Austria, to Zeilinger's lab.) In general, Menas's conference really
brought together the most important work in that area, for very deep and
important dialogue... but then the people who had that dialogue went on to
publish the same ideas elsewhere. Certainly Karl Pribram valued his
interactions with Menas, as Menas has said before on this list.
I was also surprised how google
scholar showed just ONE version of Menas’s book available for free online, but
what it showed was just one chapter in the book, mine! Another related paper it
showed was: http://www.choprafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Cosmology-Time.pdf,
a joint paper with Deepak and with Kak, one of my Facebook friends who also
spoke at the important QuIST meeting in Baltimore in 2015…
So now: what do we make of this new
effort to bring it all together?
In my own recent papers trying to
dig deep into these questions (links posted at www.werbos.com/religions.htm), I
mention "Cosmic Mind Idealism" (CMI), a theory about how reality
works, which I tend to associate with Deepak (though of course the idea is much
older). Deepak's video ... seems to me the mental side of "monism,"
the notion that there is only one reality, really, and that that reality is
consciousness. The mind.
In ancient times, when I
think of the ancient leaders of India who wrote part of the ancient
Upanishads as people more like my wife than like today's brahmins... I
imagine even then a debate: is the cosmos like a "great machine"
(like the Fock space Schrodinger equation, in spirit) or Great Mind?
monists could agree that
everything which exists is ONE or the OTHER, but which? Dualists could
suggest that "both of you are right", that there is one realm obeying
the mental kind of reality, and ANOTHER which is like a great machine.
When Ram talks about "dual
aspect monism," it is important to remember he is echoing a VERY
ancient stream of thought. So far as I know, the major thought leader
in India who created that stream was Ramanuja, and we are honored to have
the presence here of Vardan Chandar who represents the modern Ramanuja
Foundation. From my limited reading of Ramanuja, I have the impression that he
essentially said: "AT THE FOUNDATIONS, the Monists were right. Maybe it is
a great machine, or maybe it is a great mind, BUT EITHER WAY, it has those two
ASPECTS, both of which are important and real to US in our
practical life."
And so, we naturally ask: is
Deepak right, and Mind in some form the basic fabric of reality, of the
cosmos? Or is all governed by something LIKE the Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch vision
of a Schrodinger equation operating over something LIKE the modern version of
Fock Space? (I owe Alex Hankey a caveat: "something like" could be
over a 4D extension of Fock Space, or a finite dimensional geometric manifold
ala eiinstein.) I see little basis for BELIEVING it might even be something
else altogether, but proper quest for truth should make room for other
possibilities as well, even though these two are what I find most compelling.
Long ago, Stan Klein on
this list asked: "Does it really MATTER whether it is a great
consciousness or a great Fock space cum Schrodinger equation? Is it not
possible that BOTH theories of reality are equally useful and
equally valid in helping us cope with OUR humble level of existence in
this tiny solar system?"Furthermore, mathematics of mind are
fundamental to US as we use our minds to try to understand the whole of our
experience, but we still have grounds to expect that our minds may be just
emergent brain phenomena (remembering that noospheres and computers can
have a kind of brain) emerging in a cosmos governed by something like a
Schrodinger equation?
To me, this is the real dual aspect
monism. The mind aspect and the Schrodinger aspect are equally fundamental to
US, and we simply do not know which is fundamental to how reality itself
actually works. WE DON'T KNOW, and any human who pretends to know for sure
which of the two is the ultimate reality is not telling himself the truth. Yet
we can USE both viewpoints, and we will understand more, in principle, if we
learn to use BOTH of therm to make sense of experience. And we can hope
SOMEDAY to be like true scientists here, finding experience or evidence which
SOMEDAY might give us a clue about which is the ultimate reality. (yet could we
not ALWAYS imagine a deeper level yet, no matter how deep we go?).
==========
But these considerations are
all just prerequisites (reflecting what I already said in
www.werbos.com/religions.htm). I do take the great mind (CMI) concept very
seriously, and I keep trying to make sense of what it tells us. If people USE
the CMI concept as an excuse for not learning math, and for screaming at
mechanical repairmen or Western scientists trying to fix their furnace (I have
seen behavior a bit like that!), it does not help. If they use it as a defense
mechanism (See Vaillant's great longitudinal study, or Trungpa'sbook on
the stages of spiritual growth), it may be inferior to the more honest defense
mechanisms they talk about.
There was a time when I did not take
the CMI as seriously as I do now.
My first problem with CMI as a
theory of reality was that it is a large FAMILY of possible theories. The same
is true of the Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch (EWD) theory; in ANY version of quantum
field theory (QFT), it is a DIFFERENT theory – often very different – depending
on what function one uses for the Lagrangian or Hamiltonian H in the theory.
However, in QFT we have many different explicit CHOICES for what H might be. By
exploring these choices in depth, we can get a better idea of which one is true.
EACH ONE is concrete enough that it gives us a pathway not only to experiments
but to design and to study of what we see across the domains of life. For me,
it leads to the concept of a noosphere of noosphere species; in the papers at www.werbos.com/religions.htm, I
can then USE this point of view, by connecting noosphere and other concepts to
very concreate realities of life, all the way to real issues of life, policy
and technology. WHAT DOES CMI offer to add to that in any way?
It is OK for believers in CMI to say
“oh yes, human bodies do exist, and I will even feed mine today.” OK, for those
of us who experience noosphere level life, it should be equally OK to say “OK,
I will live with and in the noosphere as well.” Exactly as I would if I had not
even heard of CMI.
CMI AS A WAY TO LIVE LIFE, as an
ASPECT, can also be used to adopt an attitude of freedom and creativity. That’s
useful, exactlh as Stan Klein said here before. But we can do that from the
viewpoint of noospheres as well. Yes, it is a useful ASPECT at time, especially
if it is well integrated with what we learn form ALSO knowing the other
aspects, but what does it add really? What does it add as a theory of reality
that we cannot get from the EWD version of noospheres and human life?
This question should be approached
very seriously, and with humility, because if CMI DOES make a difference, in
some form with some extension, it could make a huge difference in our lives.
And that is why I started trying to probe the possibilities of CMI many years
ago, before Deepak’s video.
Many decades ago, I was impressed by
a light little story book, What Dreams May Come, by Matheson, which presented a
VISION of what CMI might actually mean, MORE CONCRETELY AND MORE SPECIFICALLY.
(By the way, Deepak also wrote a story book decades ago, about Merlin, which also
provides badly needed depth to a CMI viewpoint. The movie for Matheson’s book
was not as good as the book, but 3D and color do add SOMETHING, despite a few
provincial biases.) I later learned that this was basically an echo of the view
of Swedenborg, who was viewed as having demonstrated HIS PSI gifts (aka “siddhi”)
very strongly. This book portrays the creative power of consciousness as
something very strong and very vivid, but I asked myself “Now how does it work?
Where is the PURPOSE here? Where is it GOING?”
Knowing the mathematics of
intelligent system (even now, more than other humans on this planet do), I did
not really see so much directly within this view of reality by itself, unless
augmented.
The most concrete, meaningful
POSSIBILITY I could make out in this part of mental space was the idea of life
as a school, linked to the idea that “People are Real, World is Not” (PARWIN).
It is also linked to the Rosicrucian Order in the West, whose long history I
once traced in the large stacks of Harvard’s Widener Library. (It was amazing
to see one book on the shelf declaring that group A did not exist, shelved next
to a book published by group A in France in the nineteenth century! But they
too, like India, went through many centuries of ferment and rethinking.)
When I first heard that theory, I
asked quite sincerely: “OK, if life for us is a school, what is the curriculum?
What do we have to learn in order to graduate (and not flunk out)?” The two
most DIRECT and CONCRETE answer I have read on that question comes from
Trungpa,
(which I learned about from his book Born in Tibet), and
from Joel Whitten of the University of Toronto. As I check the links for this
post, I am amazed that his lesser book Life Between Life, now sells for
$1000 on Amazon! (https://www.amazon.com/Life-Between-Joel-Whitten/dp/0446347620/).
Deep in my computer files, I think I have a copy of his unpublished manuscript
which goes much deeper into the question. Joel did serious neuroscience and psychiatry
and PSI exploration which goes much deeper than anything I now see on the web.
Still, as I type this, I have to admit that “life as a
school” IS an important aspect. The belief that we might be learning SOMETHING
important, even if our entire planet may be exploded sooner than we think, adds
a certain kind of resilience, and changes our game somewhat to the extent that
we think it might be the ultimate reality here. But WHAT should we learn? The
hard for EWD version of noosphere ALSO puts a value on what we learn AT THE
SOUL level,
Which persists in the noosphere, but this version of CMI adds
a possible dimension of value beyond that. But could it just be joke by the
noosphere, helping us not fall apart when we are discouraged by things which would
not be discouraging if we could see everything which the noosphere sees?
But I never got SO deep into that. The EWD+noosphere
possibility spelled out from www.werbos.com/religions.htm
seemed powerful enough, and what real justification could I find for believing
anything else (DISCOUNTING what people believe because they want to believe they
are gods of the cosmos or whatever, obvious ego bias).
As Donald Trump started to pick up momentum, I heard many
intellectuals tell me: “I used to just laugh at that idea that life is just a
dream, like a dream of that sleeping Vishnu whose shrine you saw in Kathmandhu.
But the more I watch the news this year, I begin to wonder more and more seriously:
IS THIS REAL???? Maybe it COULD be a dream..”
That didn’t really affect me that way, directly, but I HAVE
seen some things harder and harder to really explain.. fully…
And then, this morning, in meditation…
If you ask “what WOULD knowledge of CMI add, IN CASE IT WERE
TRUE..”… well, if **I** take the viewpoint of consciousness
Looking at everything else… much as Trungpa wants us to
learn… it suggests that I actually DO have degrees of freedom which I SHOULD
take more account of. And such degrees of freedom do connect with what I find
it hardest to make sense of.
So OK, that’s an aspect.
Is it too dangerous an aspect to say anything about? (Aside
from obvious social dangers, for folks who would be terrified EITHER by CMI
or by hard core Einsteinian physics.) Ah,
but if we see more form the noosphere viewpoint, thinking of it as the property
of just one human personality would
Imply a wrong attitude. So that is why I type this crazy
thing, because even if THESE roots will not go far in most soil, I cannot
justify just locking them up.
Amanda might say: “If your best hard core scientific logic
is in danger of locking us up, in a world which is so rigid, like the Ventus
world which makes Karl himself uncomfortable, don’t we have the FREEDOM at some
deep level to aim instead for BALANCE?” Well, even noospheres can evolve to be
balanced (as do mundane biological organisms). But it may help for us to
understand as deeply as possible that we DO have some degrees of freedom more
than what a mundane attitude would suggest.
But do they extend to living more of a PARWIN kind of life?
Well, for balance for me, it may be time for more of that right now.
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