Spiritual Insights Based upon the Brain's Self-generated Insights Are Probably Mistaken

© 2010 Peter Free

 

19 June 2010

 

Our brain is a limited tool

 

The limitations of the brain as a perceiving and analytical tool should make us cautious about making absolute pronouncements.

 

Assuming that the brain is a reliable source of information about our connection to ultimate reality is a common error in spiritual literature.  Most such thinking is based on ideas that originated long before humankind achieved any understanding of science generally and neuroscience particularly.

 

The brain’s self-limited investigation leads to mistaken insights

 

Meditative spiritual traditions often posit their understanding of the Whole based on self-examination of the nature of one’s own consciousness.  Statements like the following one are common:

 

Awareness sees what arises.  Whatever appears, appears to awareness.  In order for form, thought, feeling, sensation, time, space, unity and multiplicity to appear to awareness, awareness itself cannot be limited or defined by these factors.  Awareness is the single subject of all objects.  It is the formless that sees all form.  It is the unseen seer. . . . Sometimes awareness is called consciousness.  The two terms are synonymous in this teaching.

 

Greg Goode, Standing as Awareness: The Direct Path 1 (Non-Duality Press, 2009).

 

Spiritual masters take this insight as the basis for asserting that (i) “all is one,” (ii) “I am that,” and (iii) the concept that individuals are mistaken, when they perceive themselves to exist as separate entities.

 

Except at the level of ridiculously expanded and therefore mostly useless intellectual abstraction, these insights are an unjustified leap based on unspoken, unproved assumptions.

 

Error in reasoning explained

 

The error in reasoning made in the above quotation is simple.  Unless (a) our brains are all equally accurate in their insights and (b) all fully and self-knowingly encompass the entirety of the Whole, the non-duality theory fails ─ at least at the practical level of existence.

 

Being a tiny part of an ocean wave (another favorite spiritual metaphor) is not at all the same as being the totality of the wave.  Nor is it the same as understanding the totality of the universe or universe-complex in which the wave exists (or does not exist).

 

Science has demonstrated that the human brain is a fallible tool

 

I know of no reputable neuroscientist who would say that our brains are infallible observers of the cosmos.  So obvious a shortcoming as being unable to perceive all but a tiny spectrum of electromagnetic activity squashes our sense of perfect capacity.  The psychological tricks our minds play on us add more inadequacies to the packet of limited/incorrect sensory perceptions.  And psychic pathology, arguably present in most of us to some degree, adds still more error to that.

 

If one throws in the relativity generated by one’s position in space, it becomes difficult to see how any human thinking entity is ever going to fully understand or appreciate the entirety of the Whole.

 

A fallible tool cannot generate a statistically-certain infallible insight

 

Our brains’ self-generated insights are, therefore, unreliable vehicles to cosmic understanding (other than allowing us to become more aware of some components of the process of our misunderstanding).

 

Analysis limited to the brain’s self-generated perception of itself is necessarily limited by the scope of the brain’s perceptual and cognitive ability.

 

This is obvious, for example, when we think of the evolution of computers and scientific instruments.

 

Yet, historically, it has not been obvious when people think of their own cognitive and sensory abilities.  Given the self-obvious errors we routinely make in thinking, the continued feeling of insightful accuracy about spiritual matters in itself points to the fallibility of our perception.

 

We continue to perpetuate ancient misunderstandings as if they were true

 

We perpetuate thousand-year-old (and more) nonsense that we foolishly think has been authenticated by our own brain’s equally mistaken meditative insights.

 

To be persuasive, spiritual thinking needs to incorporate scientific findings and humility

 

If spiritual thinking is to progress in a persuasive way, it needs to incorporate reality-knowledge gained over the last one hundred years.

 

I am not saying science is the key to spiritual understanding, but I am saying any spiritual hypothesis that leaves scientific understandings out (or shoves them aside) is likely to be a foolish one.

 

A dose of humility in the mix would be good.