Chapter 3 (Ontology)

Ontology and epistemology in the spiritual journey

Ontology is the study of being or the nature of being. It investigates what entities exist and how they can be grouped into categories. In some ways we all have our own personal ontologies of things we believe exist or don’t exist. Some may believe that trolls who live under bridges exist. Others may not. In the modern sciences, we believe that physical forces such as gravity exist. We accept that subatomic particles, molecules including neurotransmitter receptors, structural proteins and enzymes exist. These beliefs are based on inferences from observations that we can experience with our senses although the objects themselves, gravity, the molecules and such we cannot see directly. Since these objects are not directly relevant to the spiritual journey, I will not try to justify belief in them here. However, our ontologies structure how we view the world which is why I think I should explain mine.

But before turning to ontologies, we should say a word about epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how do we know what we know. What are reasonable bases for accepting something as true. Most traditions accept that direct experience, seeing something directly is the most reliable basis for considering something true. In other works, seeing is believing. Of course, we all know that sometimes we may see things that are not true as in mirages or individuals may have hallucinations in which what they see things which do not have a material existence but are rather created in the mind.

However, as a first approximation, seeing something for ourselves is probably a more reliable method of establishing truth than any other. Other options include reliable testimony. We know someone who has seen something for themselves. If they are a reliable witness, we accept their testimony as being almost as good as if we had seen it ourselves. Then there are various forms of reasoning. We take a set of facts obtained through whatever means and reason our way to some new conclusion which then becomes fact. If the reasoning is done correctly and the facts that it is based on are sound, we should reach a reliable conclusion.

In the spiritual journey, however we run into the problem that since the spiritual realm is beyond what can be appreciated by the five ordinary senses, we cannot directly observe it with those senses. Furthermore, it is not possible with the information we have from our five senses to reason our way to what that realm beyond the senses is like. This brings us to other ways the spiritual realm can be appreciated. There is knowledge that does not come directly through the physical senses. It is sensed in the mind but does not come through the senses. Maybe the best term for this knowledge is intuitive. It has also been called intellectual vision. The Buddha called it direct knowledge. It is that which in Plato is appreciated by the mind’s eye not the bodies eye. It may come through or be aided by mediation. Using reason, intuitive knowledge can be combined with information obtained through the senses to reach conclusions about the material world, the spiritual world and the relationship between them.

What is the role of faith?

A related subject that should be addressed is that of faith. Faith is usually defined as trust or confidence in something or someone. It also may refer to a strong belief e.g. in a set of religious convictions. These convictions often come from revelations to a prophet. They may be seen as a form of expert testimony. The prophet sees something and is relating that something back. I am going to reject considering pure faith as a means of reliable knowledge. Rather I think that if such revelations are to be accepted, we should test them for ourselves. A similar attitude was endorsed by the Buddha who told his followers that they should take his teachings and apply them for themselves. If they found them of value they should be accepted. If not, they should be rejected.

This subject deserves a fuller exploration. But for not now, I think it worth stating that  my ontological conclusions stated below are based on my own empirical sense experiences in this world, as well as intuitions gained from introspection, reflection, and mediation, combined with reason.

Four things that exist

I am going to adopt the view that four things exist:

(1)   The physical body including the brain

(2)   The spiritual consciousness

(3)   The mind

(4)   The Source

In this ontology, the physical body and brain are mortal. They die. The spiritual consciousness and the Source are immortal. They cannot die. Furthermore, spiritual consciousness is made of the same material substance as the Source. Mind is viewed as a transient state that reflects the interactions of the spiritual consciousness and brain/body while we are alive.

The physical body including the brain

The existence of a physical body and brain seem fairly straightforward and widely accepted. We live in a physical body that we readily appreciate. I realize this been questioned from some philosophical viewpoints but I am not going to worry about them here. A physical brain and body exist.

Spiritual consciousness

Spiritual consciousness is not made of any physical material that we currently know how to detect. However, an entity that survives outside the physical body must exist to explain observations related to what happens during life and after death. Although it is immaterial, it seems to have an awareness and even a memory and senses what is happening even when it is outside the body. I make these assertions based on near death experiences and the phenomenon of remembering past lives.

Near-death experiences

Near-death experiences first came to general public awareness through the book of Raymond Moody (Life After Life, HarperOne, 1975). Additional cases have been widely documented since that time. I’ve encountered people who have experienced them. They have been most widely documented in individuals who were resuscitated after cardiac arrests or who experienced severe physical trauma such as in automobile accidents. The individual describes an out of body experience. The experience often includes a feeling of passing through a dark tunnel with a light at its end. Subjects typically recall feeling like they are in some type of a body and can recount details of health care professionals performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or other resuscitation maneuvers on their own physical bodies. They recount a sense of seeing or knowing what is happening but not exactly sensed the same as in a normal body through the ordinary senses. These experiences often include a feeling of peace and leave long-lasting impressions after the individual returns to a living body.

To be clear, near-death experiences are not death experiences since the individual always returns to life. However, for purposes here, they suggest to me that a consciousness can exist outside the body. In this state individuals have a sense of being in some type of body although they recognize that it is distinct from their physical body. In this state, they are able to record new memories about ongoing events and recall old memories from their life in the form of the flash back that is often described. Thus, it seems that there is a consciousness able to record and store new memories even without a functioning brain that would be required for new memory storage in our ordinary daily lives.

Some have offered physiologically based explanations for these experiences based on activities of the brain during such episodes. I find these explanations unconvincing. Brain activity does continue as judged by electrical activity on an electroencephalogram (EEG) but this type of electrical activity doesn’t support normal mental activity. In particular, I don’t see how the type of brain activity present during a cardiac arrest could allow for the formation of new memories of an event as has been described in multiple cases. I think it more likely that these experiences should be taken at face value as evidence of a consciousness which is not dependent on normal brain activity that has left the body for a time and then returned. I view this consciousness as part of what I refer to as the spiritual consciousness.

Remembrances of past lives

The second line of evidence for a non-material consciousness is remembrances of past lives. These have also been widely documented. A book that influenced me is Ian Stevenson’s “Twenty Cases suggestive of Reincarnation” (Second edition, University of Virginia Press, 1974). In these cases, a common scenario seems to be that a typically young child recounts experiences from what appear to be past lives or sometimes makes statements to the parents like you are not my parents, my parents are somewhere else. The parents are typically at first disbelieving and try to ignore the statements or punish the child for making them. However, something happens and someone outside the family hears the story and says oh that story is similar to something that happened to a family over there. The parents often reluctantly investigate and discover the similarities of the child’s story to the life of another individual somewhere else who is now dead.

As with near-death experiences, first, perhaps we should address why we should trust such experiences. Alternative explanations that have been offered are that they are all hoaxes. The parents made all this up and coached their kids to tell stories in the hope that they will become rich and famous. Even if that explains some cases it doesn’t explain most. A second is that they aren’t exactly hoaxes but the parents have subliminally coached the children by telling them stories which the child then tells as if it were their own story. Again, even if this explains some cases, it doesn’t explain most as in many stories, the parents couldn’t have had prior knowledge of the events. Thirdly is just to accept the stories at face value. That this child was this person in a past live and within the spiritual consciousness retained a memory of that past life. The only other explanation that I can see is that the child wasn’t that person in a previous life but somehow gained access to information about that other person’s past life through some immaterial telepathic mechanism and now believes the story as if it were their own. While I can’t provide any evidence against it, this last interpretation strikes me as a bit odd and just on the basis of simplicity not very convincing.

Thus, I am inclined to accept these stories at face value, namely that the child was this other person in a previous life. These observations are important in that they provide evidence for a consciousness which can exists outside of the physical body that has a capacity to retain memories even after the physical body dies. These memories are then accessible to the individual in the next lifetime although often these children “outgrow” these memories and no longer remember them later in life. The basis for how these memories could be transmitted between lives must involve some storage mechanism, whereby the memories are stored in the spiritual consciousness that lives on after death. Whatever substance this spiritual consciousness is made of, it does not fit into any of the material categories we currently know how to detect.

Besides providing awareness and being the seat of intellectual activity, I see the spiritual consciousness as playing a second role as a life activating force. It gives the body the animation that we consider life. This aspect is more akin to the concept of spirit. It gives the body what we sense as the spiritual body or energy body that we associate with who we are. In life this spiritual body may be sensed through mediation. It is likely the same body sensed by those who experience near death experiences. As discussed more below, I am not totally happy with the term “spiritual consciousness” but I think it is necessary to have a term that encompasses not only the notion of awareness and intellectual activity but something as well like spirit or life force.

Mind

This brings us to the issue of mind. Mind represents a transient state reflecting an interaction between the spiritual consciousness and brain while the spiritual consciousness is located in the physical body. Mind and consciousness have a relationship to the brain. In western neuroscience, we talk about the brain/mind duality. The brain in this context refers to the physical substance of the gray matter, white matter, axonal tracts, neurotransmitters all the physical stuff. But then there are thoughts, perceptions, feeling, sense experiences, the mental states that we experience in the mind. The basic question of brain/mind duality is how much of mental activity including thought can be explained by brain function. There are different points of view on this question among western philosophers ranging from very materialistic views that all mental activity can be understood as a product of brain function to very little of it can.

While the spiritual consciousness is in the body, mind is the seat of its mental activity. In this setting, the spiritual consciousness is influenced by brain activity. While we are under anesthesia, we have no awareness of our external environment or conscious thoughts. The physical brain influences how we think and feel. The brain is necessary for our capacity to store memories during life. Disease states such as stroke, traumatic brain injuries or Alzheimer’s disease affect storge of new memories as well as how we think, feel and express thoughts. Drugs may profoundly alter our mental functioning through their effects on the brain.

The body/brain may at times be left in a vegetative state. These states can occur after hypoxic/ischemic damage to brain such as after cardiac arrests or with severe traumatic brain injuries or strokes. In these states vegetative functions such as the ability to maintain blood pressure and respiration are maintained. There are electrical brain waves which can be seen on an electroencephalogram (EEG) that may look close to a normal waking state but the individual is not conscious. In these states the individual may appear awake in the sense that their eyes are open and they appear to look around and make automatic reflex responses but the subject is not aware. There is no mental activity or consciousness as we think of it.

In vegetative states, the consciousness is presumed to still be in the body since it still provides the vital force or energy which is necessary to maintain a living physiologically active body. Without that vital force the physical body dies although the body may be maintained through artificial life support for a period of time. Yet, while consciousness is part of mind, its functioning is influenced, colored or at times one might say tainted by the activities of the brain or disease states that may affect brain. This subject deserves a fuller exploration which I hope I can turn to later. However, for purposes of where we are now which is about establishing ontologies, it sets out why I distinguish spiritual consciousness from mind.

Three types of thoughts

I also Infer the existence of a spiritual consciousness that is separate from mind through my own introspection and reasoning when I examine thoughts. When I look at my own thoughts, I think I see three kinds of thoughts. There are first of all the thoughts that I think when I am focused on a subject as I am writing this now. I also include the thoughts that occur when I am listening to and responding to a question, trying to solve a problem or understand something. I call these type I thoughts. A second type of thought which I will call type II thoughts is the chatter in our heads. This includes thinking about that conversation we had earlier in the day that did or did not go well, or the errands I need to do later or what I am going to have for dinner. They are the thoughts that I would prefer to mostly not have but have trouble shutting down. They are the noise in our heads that distracts us. There is a third type of thought which seems to come out of nowhere. These thoughts may appear during or after coming out of a session of meditation or just show up spontaneously at other times. They are not type I or type II thoughts. Sometimes they involve new insights, other times not. They are the rarest but sometimes the most interesting. I’m not sure where type III thoughts come from. I don’t feel like I think them and they are not type II thoughts.

Separating consciousness from mind

Though meditation it is possible to quiet the chatter in the mind. When I do this, I sense that type I thoughts come from the spiritual consciousness interacting with the brain and the spiritual consciousness is directing the activity. These thoughts focus on a purer mental activity that is more objective, more an observer than a participant. When the spiritual consciousness becomes overly engaged in mind activities it gets caught up in the reactions, the fantasies, the replays of previous events that are type II thoughts. In this state the spiritual consciousness doesn’t see the world clearly as it really is. Thus, type II thoughts which are generated in the brain, serve to distract the spiritual consciousness from its more serious purposes. Separating the spiritual consciousness from mind will be become important in returning to the Source which is the subject of Chapter 4.

Terminology

I should comment on the choice of the term “spiritual consciousness”. I’ve gone back and forth on what to call this element. I’ve considered either consciousness or spirit alone. I’m not happy with either because I think both words in English carry specific, slightly different connotations and the state that I am describing is a combination of both. In an English dictionary “conscious” or “consciousness” refers mostly to awareness. By contrast “spirit” refers to an animating or vital principle that gives life to a physical organism. Spirit can also refer to a supernatural being or essence as in the holy spirit. It can also have usages including referring to an attitude or disposition of an individual but those uses are not directly relevant to the discussion here. I see the spiritual consciousness as a combination of awareness/intellectual activity and a vital force or animating principle. It has an awareness in being conscious but it also carries a vitality or activating force which makes the individual alive in a conventional sense. What I am describing is probably most similar to Purusha of Samkhya philosophy. Maybe it would be better to just give it a non-English name which would not carry the connotations of an existing English word which could then be defined to mean whatever we want it to mean. However, I have chosen to go with the slightly awkward spiritual consciousness for its clarity in indicating both elements.

The Source

The Source is the most mysterious of the four elements. It is the least accessible to us. It is ineffable. It can’t be described in human words. The Source is in all of us but we can’t see it. No intellect can comprehend it. Descriptions often get into contraindications. It wasn’t created but it created everything. It is all parts of creation yet it has no parts. None of these descriptions make any sense but they begin to capture the tone and feeling of something that can’t be described in human language and is sometimes maybe easier to describe by what it is not.

Something similar to the Source can be found in many traditions. The Hindu Brahman probably represents its first extensive description. However, I think terms for the same entity in other traditions include the Beloved of Sufism. Latter Buddhists seem to have sensed the same entity in their descriptions of Buddha nature, true nature or true self. I would even say that the farther shore or the state of Nirvana of the original Buddha is the same state. I’m not the first to suggest this and although I think most Buddhist would probably reject the notion that Brahman and Nirvana are the same entities my guess is the Buddha was sensing the same reality. The Source also seems identical to what Plato was sensing in the allegory of the cave as the light outside the cave, the place of true being. The Good as Plato also described it or the One of the later neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus seem to be the same entity. The god of the Stoics as for example described in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius seems remarkably similar to the Hindu Brahman. I think these are all names for the same entity. My sense is that the authors of the Dao De Jing were sensing the same entity in the Dao.

The term God is sometimes applied to the Source and I am going to choose to capitalize Source to emphasize this quality. The Source is probably similar to the God of Christian mystics such as Meister Eckert. However, the Source differs from the more personal Gods of Christianity, Judaism or Islam in the west or the Hindu gods such as Shiva or Vishnu. These Gods have more human like characteristics. They can become angry. Sometimes they make deals with their subjects. They can be sacrificed to obtain favors and in some cases are the final judges of human destiny after death.

By contrast, the Source is impersonal. It has no human feelings. It is not loving or vengeful nor does it judge. It transcends and is above the personal gods. It just is and will always be the underlying basis of the worlds that we see and the ones we do not. Hinduism, specifically draws a distinction between the Gods and Brahman. The appeal of the Source is that it is permanent and unchanging. Once one returns to it, one can escape the impermanent and unsatisfactory nature of our current existence.