Neurons, Nirvana & the Great Consciousness Conundrum

"We don’t even understand the brain of a worm." Christof Koch, PhD, Chief Scientist and President of Allen Institute of Brain Science

Greetings dear readers. So after that highly engaging trip to the psychedelic world and what gives us psychedelic-like experiences, we come back to one of my favourite topics – the subject of consciousness.

The science vs spirituality debate can take on several layers, but its essence is quite simple. Science essentially believes that the material world is all there is, and everything can be explained based on empirical evidence and the scientific method, which involves observation, experimentation, and repeatability. Scientific theories must be falsifiable, meaning they can be tested and potentially disproven. This criterion ensures that scientific knowledge is always subject to revision and improvement. And we do know that just keeps on happening.

Spirituality emphasizes personal, subjective experiences as a source of knowledge - mystical states, meditation, prayer, etc, techniques that take you inward. The insights you get from spirituality are not easily quantifiable or subject to empirical testing. Spirituality argues that reality goes beyond the physical world and includes non-material dimensions, such as consciousness, soul, and the divine. And therefore, you cannot understand life without holistically integrating the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of existence.

Ever heard a doctor say, “Science is clear that there is nothing left when your body dies?” You can catch the same doctor some other time when he says something like, “You need to watch your weight!” or “You need to calm your temper”.

"My position concerning consciousness is that it is something quite outside the presently known laws of physics." Roger Penrose

Weight belongs to the body. Temper belongs to the mind. But did we ever consider asking, “Who is the ‘I’ who needs to work on them?” Believe me, the doctor won’t have an answer. He or she may have theories, not an answer.

Does spirituality have an answer for that matter? It claims to have it, but not through empirical evidence. And not for everyone. Many spiritual traditions assert the existence of transcendental realities or higher states of consciousness that are fundamentally different from ordinary experiences.

For instance, the minds of monks have gone into fMRI scanners very often in the recent decades. One experiment on eight long-term Buddhist practitioners (with an average of 34,000 hours in mental training) compared their minds in a meditative state and a neutral state. They found the generation of high amplitude gamma rays in the brain, showing higher capability of neuroplasticity, attention, memory, learning and happiness.

So meditation can have that kind of impact on the brain. But doesn’t it bring back the same question again? The activity was done by the monks, and science can analyse the impact of that activity in parts of the brain.

In this manner, science can measure the impact of every aspect of your lifestyle on your body and brain. But it cannot really decipher one simple question, “Who is the I who takes these decisions and has these subjective experiences?”

In a lecture I was listening to, someone said that Default Mode Network (DMN) in your brain is the source of your self-consciousness (where the psychedelics work to alter your state of consciousness). But science doesn’t actually conclude that.

The DMN is a network of brain regions that shows higher activity when a person is at rest and not focused on the outside world, such as during daydreaming, self-referential thinking, and mind-wandering. The DMN is involved in functions related to self-awareness, autobiographical memory, and the integration of past experiences with present and future planning. So it plays a crucial role in maintaining a sense of self and continuity, which are important aspects of conscious experience.

Consciousness is not localized to a single network or brain region, in the scientific view. Instead, it is thought to emerge from the dynamic interactions between multiple networks, including the DMN, the salience network, and the central executive network.

The ego vs the self

Now to put it more simply we are all shaped by our past memories and our perspective for the future, aren’t we? When you come to this world, you do not have any worldly identities or experiences like name, religion, income status, nationality, family name, relationships, etc. Everything you acquire is based on two things – your experiences and how you respond to them. As you grow older, this solidifies into patterns of thinking that may work for you or against you. They are your unique patterns of thinking.

But realise this – they are not you. You do not have the same body that you had when you were young and not the same mind either. Neuroscience can study the ‘neural correlates’ of consciousness or how that activity reflects in your brain.

“The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is the atheist who does not believe in himself.” Swami Vivekananda

Science may theorise that consciousness belongs to various parts of the brain. But what if a certain Mr John Doe loses his memory due to a dreaded diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimer’s? So he has lost his ego self – the memory of who he was. But then, what continues to exist as the body (with its trials and tribulations due to the disease) as long as the person you know as John Doe is alive? Well spirituality would argue that there is an entity embodied in the human body that continues to exist. The name John Doe was given by this world!

Indeed, science agrees that consciousness is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of science. How does experience happen, and how is it stored in memory? What makes a chocolate sweet and an ice cream cold? Why are mountains pleasant and why is driving on busy city roads a pain?

The redness of red, the bitterness of bitterness, and the pain of a headache are all examples of qualia or subjective, conscious experience. Understanding how physical processes in the brain give rise to qualia is a major philosophical and scientific challenge. This is because there is a gap between the objective descriptions of brain activity and the subjective nature of conscious experiences. Experience cannot be explained in scientific terms.

"Science has explored the microcosmos and the macrocosmos; now it must turn inward to a systematic study of the interior world, the realm of conscious experience."

Spirituality says that this consciousness is the fundamental reality of the universe and is not material. You are that consciousness or a figment of it – call it consciousness, soul or spirit that is eternal and unchanging. I had discussed the Vedantic approach to knowing who you really are in this blog , I welcome you to read it. When John Doe loses his memory, that consciousness still exists and continues to survive for the life of the body. It has only lost connection to the ego identity of the individual John Doe.

The only thing that is constant is the ‘I’ that experiences this changing body, mind and world. But that constant entity is the mystery! We attach and identify ourselves to the changing experiences of life, and not the unchanging self we are. In fact, it scares a lot of people to get ‘unattached’ to their personal universe for the same reason. Ignoring the truth does not change it, however. Leave alone the mystery of God. Unravel the mystery of ‘you’!

Article authored with inputs from ChatGPT