BY SUZAN CAROLL
Becoming ONE
People and Planet
A Manual for Personal
and Planetary Transformation
MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR
MULTIDIMENSIONAL
MEMORIES
Dear Readers,
As a result of our process, many
multidimensional memories and stories may be
flooding our consciousness. Are these really
stories from beings on different planets, galaxies
and dimensions, or are they just our
imagination? Most important, is there a
difference between memory and imagination?
If we really are creating our own reality, then a
reality which is limited to third-dimensional
Earth is merely our choice of creation.
What if we, the creators of our reality, were
able to imagine a reality in which we were NOT
limited to the third dimension? What if WE, the
creators, were able to go into the memory of our
fully integrated Multidimensional SELF, to
recover long forgotten memories of other
realities that are beyond the confines of this
particular dimension, time and space?
Could we trust our "imagination" enough to let
go of the restraints of limiting our consciousness
to only one reality, one expression of our total
SELF? When our consciousness is restricted to
the third dimension, we cannot heal Gaia, of
whom we are a member, for it was that limited
consciousness that created the situation that
OUR planet, and ALL her creatures, is now
experiencing.
The industrial world is the result of humanity's
deepest journey into our left-brain's analytical,
sequential abilities. These abilities have taught
us absolute separation into the individual
consciousness of our "modern" world.
Meanwhile, our expanded perceptions of
telepathy, precognition, telekinesis,
clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience,
which result from the whole brain thinking of
merging our right and left hemispheres, have
been filtered out of our individual thirddimensional
consciousness.
Furthermore, with our accentuation on only
half our brain's innate capacity, we have fallen
into black and white thinking. The absolutes of
black and white thinking are based on the very
polarity that created the third-dimensional
world, as well as our quest to find the total
individuation from other humans, nature, our
planet and even our true multidimensional
SELF. We have experienced an adventure in
separation of abilities.
However, much like an entertainer who may
wish to focus only dancing until that skill feels
perfected, then only singing until that skill feels
perfected, we have disallowed ourselves the use
our full abilities. Much worse, we have hidden
our expanded abilities under our "shame of
being different." However, the dress rehearsal
for our life's performance is over, and the final
act has begun.
In order to face the ensuing challenges that
loom directly ahead, we must throw off the
illusion of shame to fully embrace our SELF and
pull together ALL that our Soul/SELF has ever
experienced on any dimension, planet or
galaxy. We must allow our imagination to
embrace and project the illumination of our
journey into the ONE.
We have learned to expand our consciousness to
cosmic consciousness by opening our Third Eye
and moving through its multidimensional
portal. Can we trust the adventures we have
had on these journeys? The multidimensional
light of the ONE basks our crown chakra and
radiates out into our physical reality via our
opened Third Eye. Simultaneously, Gaia
constantly shares her emanations up from the
core of her planetary heart, through the
highway created by our rising kundalini and
into our personal heart.
Through allowing the rise of kundalini to assist
in the integration of our Soul/SELF into each of
our chakras, we have also opened our High
Heart and merged it with our heart chakra to
complete the awakening of our planetary
consciousness. With our planetary
consciousness, we have initiated our innate
ability to be at ONE with all creatures and
matter that contribute to our group experience
of being ONE with our planet.
As the unconditional love of our expanded
heart chakra combines with our opened Third
Eye, the immense creativity of our throat
chakra bursts forth into our reality—the reality
that we are NOW creating. Our blossoming
creativity chafes at the many rules of
limitation that feel like tethers which bind our
hands, feet, heart and mind. If we are to BE
our SELF, we must break free of our limiting
cocoon like the beautiful butterfly that we are.
WE are commencing our process of
transformation from small, limited caterpillars
that only know the leaf upon which they crawl
to regal monarch butterflies that can travel
great distances on wings as fragile as lace. It is
now time to break through the confines of our
self-made cocoon. We made our cocoons in an
effort to "fit in" to a reality based on
forgetfulness of our true SELF. But, NOW, we
have remembered and none too soon.
The pivotal moment is commencing for the
planet that we have turned into a thing with
the individuality that we have so cherished.
Those of us who have awakened to our full SELF
are ready to take our place in this drama of
planetary transformation so that we can fulfill
our Divine Ideal (our Soul Purpose). Because
we have integrated our Soul/SELF into our
earth vessel, we can hear the voice of Soul
constantly encouraging and guiding us. All we
need do is surrender to our Soul, for it is
through living in surrender that we can totally
free our self from the illusions of mundane life.
What if, one-by-one, we found the courage to
"come out" as our Multidimensional SELF?
What if we balanced our intellect with our
instincts? What if we were openly telepathic,
precognitive, telekinetic, clairvoyant,
clairaudient, and clairsentient?
What is we stopped hiding our light and allowed
our illuminated essence to proudly and honestly
emanate through our fully integrated
Multidimensional SELF? With the grounding of
our Soul/SELF into Gaia's physical earth vessel
we have become the collective consciousness of
planet Earth. NOW we are ONE with Gaia and
she is ONE with us.
We have traveled through the fourth dimension
and crossed the Rainbow Bridge into the ONE.
We have expanded our consciousness from
human, individual consciousness—to planetary
consciousness—to solar consciousness—to
galactic consciousness—to cosmic consciousness.
Within our extended consciousness, our whole
brain thinking and our expanded perceptions
lies the ability to fulfill our Divine Ideal and to
contribute to the transforming planetary
reality. Together as ONE, people and planet, we
can create a planet of peace and love! What is
our personal Divine Ideal? How will we fulfill
it? To find that answer, we must go inside our
SELF and KNOW that what we receive is the
truth.
Our only real enemy is SELF-doubt, doubt that
we are infinitely ONE with our
Multidimensional SELF. If this fear begins to
invade our consciousness, we can remember to
go enter our High Heart to feel the
unconditional love of our SELF comforting us,
and enter our Third Eye to re-activate our
newly updated control panel (mind) so that we
can remember that:
WE are within the Heart of the ONE,
We are ONE with Gaia NOW!
Thank you for being your SELF,
I'll see you in the ONE,
Suzan Caroll
VOLUME ONE TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND FOREWORD
SECTION ONE: We are not just living on the planet; we are part of the planet.
CHAPTER ONE http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Awakening to SELF
Discovering our multidimensional nature
CHAPTER TWO http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Dimensional Consciousness http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Learning about our consciousness on different dimensions
CHAPTER THREE
Unconscious and Conscious Dimensional Bodies
CHAPTER FOUR
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifSee Earth as a Living Being
Correlation of human and planetary dimensional bodies
CHAPTER FIVE
Releasing Fear
Meditations and Exercises
SECTION TWO: Not only are we a part of the planet, we are a part of our SELF.
CHAPTER SIX
What is Consciousness?
Brainwaves, perception and consciousness
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Fourth Dimension
Understanding and traveling the fourth dimension
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Message from Gaiahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Elementals and and multidimensional journeyhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
SECTION THREE: If we are going to heal the planet, we must also heal ourselves.
CHAPTER NINE
The Illusion of Separation
The River of Unity
CHAPTER TEN
Entering our Earth Vessel http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Chakras and reality as a perspective
CHAPTER ELEVEN http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Introduction to the Chakras
Chakras and consciousness
SECTION FOUR: When we look into the face of SELF, we see all that stands in the way of being SELF.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Unconscious Creation
Re-Creating the Past Until it is Healed http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The First Chakra - Grounding Our New Reality http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Integrating our Soul/SELF into our root chakra and sharing our process with Gaia's first chakra at Mt. Sinai, Middle East
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Second Chakra - Gestating Our New Reality
Integrating our Soul/SELF into our navel chakra and sharing our process http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwith Gaia's second chakra in the Brazilian Amazon
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Third Chakra - Empowering Our New Reality
Integrating our Soul/SELF into our solar plexus chakra and sharing our prohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcess with Gaia's third chakra at Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa
SECTION FIVE: When we love all creation, we can create love.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Conscious Creation
Choosing Our Thoughts, Emotions and Intentions http://www.blogger.com/img/http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifblank.gif
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Fourth Chakra - Breathing Life into Our New Reality
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Fifth Chakra - Manifesting Our New Reality http://www.blogger.com/img/blankhhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif.gif
SECTION SIX: As we become ONE with our SELF we become ONE with the Planet.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Superconscious Creation http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Living in Surrender
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Sixth Chakra - Mastering Our New Reality
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Seventh Chakra - Expanding Our New Reality
SECTION SEVEN: The reality we choose to perceive is the reality we choose to live.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Opening the Third Eye
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Portal of the Third Eye
Showing posts with label EXISTENTIAL SUBJECTS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EXISTENTIAL SUBJECTS. Show all posts
The Need to Belong: Rediscovering Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Norman Kunc
Axis Consultation and Training Ltd
Originally published in: Villa, R., Thousand, J., Stainback, W. & Stainback, S. Restructuring for Caring & Effective Education. Baltimore: Paul Brookes, 1992.
© Copyright 1992 Paul H. Brookes Publishers.
Newtonian principles of physics were regarded as true until Einstein demonstrated that they provided an inadequate explanation of the laws of nature. Similarly, Freudian analysts viewed a woman's admission of being sexually abused by her father as a neurotic fantasy stemming from an "Electra complex." Only recently have other forms of therapy shown that women are accurate in their accounts of being abused. In every field of knowledge, anomalies such as these arise that call current practices and "paradigms" (i.e. world views) into question and necessitate the creation of new paradigms and related practices. It is precisely through this process that a body of knowledge develops. Such a process is now taking place in the field of special education. Anomalies have arisen that seriously call into question the validity of segregating students with specific physical, intellectual, or emotional needs. Moreover, these anomalies demand that new paradigms be created and embraced.
THE SPECIAL EDUCATION PARADIGM: SKILLS AS A PREREQUISITE TO INCLUSION
In the United States, P.L. 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, and the concept of the least restrictive environment (LRE) initially were seen as meaningful steps toward including children with physical, intellectuaI, and emotional needs within regular classrooms. In actuality, however, this legislation and its embedded concept of LRE still gave credence to segregated, self-contained classrooms. Although lip service was given to the idea that students would be integrated as much as possible, the underlying paradigm supporting the maintenance of the continuum of services was that students with severe, or even moderate, impairments needed to learn and demonstrate basic skills (e.g., staying quiet in class, going to the washroom independently,) in self-contained classrooms before they could, if ever, be allowed to enter regular classrooms. This educational paradigm can be represented as follows:
STUDENT --> skills --> regular classroom
This paradigm has been the basis for the practice of placing students with moderate or severe disabilities in segregated, self-contained classrooms or programs in which the curriculum focus is basic skills instruction. As a result, segregated classrooms generally have been seen as a necessary educational option that must be maintained to meet the needs of "some" students.
ANOMALIES IN THE SEGREGATION PARADIGM: LACK OF PROGRESS
The belief in the need for segregation has created a situation in which students with intensive physical, intellectual, or emotional needs enter the school system at the age of 5 or 6 and are placed in self-contained classrooms or programs in which life skills, age-appropriate behaviour, and possibly social interaction with other students are primary goals. These students typically stay in the school system for 15-18 years and, despite the commitment of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the majority fail to master life skills or appropriate behaviour and remain socially isolated throughout their school years. These students have not progressed at a rate that allows for a successful transition into community life (Lipsky & Gartner, 1989., Stainback, Stainback, & Forest, 1989., Wagner, 1989). Although teachers and teaching assistants may be fully committed to helping students acquire basic skills, many students seem disinterested, unwilling, or incapable of learning the skills. Moreover, students who do master certain skills often fail to retain the newly acquired skills or cannot replicate them in situations outside of the classroom. As a consequence, many "graduates" of self-contained classrooms enter directly into sheltered workshops or segregated prevocational training programs where they must continue to practice the same basic life skills. The result is that people with disabilities, unable to make the transition into community life, spend their years continuously preparing for Iife, a modern version of Sysiphus,
Often the lack of student progress is blamed on the student. Students are seen as having such severe disabilities that they are incapable of learning appropriate behaviour and skills. However, this answer is losing credibility. Research and experience are showing that students in segregated programs do imitate and learn, but often what they imitate and learn is the inappropriate behaviour of their classmates. Furthermore, there is growing documentation of students who seemed incapable of learning appropriate behaviour and skills in segregated settings achieving these previously unattainable goals once integrated into regular classrooms. It seems, then, that the adherence to current paradigms within special education has resulted in the creation and maintenance of what I term "retarded immersion" classes. Students are immersed in an environment of "retarded behaviour" and learn how to be retarded.
A far more reasonable explanation for the lack of student progress has to do with the absence of motivation. There are very few, if any, rewards or payoffs to the student for learning new activities in this environment. Students don't pass retarded immersion and exit to general education: they can't even fail retarded immersion. In fact, they are sometimes even punished for being successful. For example I have seen situations where students have been required to stack blocks in an effort to improve fine motor control. The students successfully complete this task only to be given smaller blocks. Consequently, the task becomes more difficult until it is beyond the students' capability. We ask children to spend their entire day doing tasks that are meaningless and difficult and then wonder why very little is learned in retarded immersion.
MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS: A PARADIGM FOR MOTIVATING LEARNING
In sum, segregated programs and classrooms have failed to teach students appropriate behaviour and skills. Environments where students model, learn, and practice inappropriate or meaningless behaviours have not been successful in preparing individuals for community life. These anomalies challenge the validity of segregation as an educational practice and require new paradigms to be developed -- paradigms that incorporate a motivation to learn.
Educators have a choice. We can either continue to blame the lack of progress in segregated classrooms on the severity of the disability, or we can have the courage and integrity to seriously question whether there is, in fact, a more effective way to prepare students with disabilities to enter the community after graduation.
In the 1980s, it became increasingly apparent that a different paradigm was needed to accomplish the goals set forth for special education. The special education practices of the past were founded on an old paradigm where skills were seen as a prerequisite to inclusion or integration. An alternate paradigm reverses this order, and requires educators to temporarily abandon their emphasis on skills and place the child in the regular classroom with appropriate support. The rationale is that a student's desire to belong, to be "one of the kids," provides the motivation to learn new skills, a motivation noticeably absent in segregated classrooms. This new paradigm could be visually represented as follows:
STUDENT ==> regular classroom ==> skills
(with support)
This paradigm, with its recognition of the importance of belonging, is not a new concept introduced with the inclusive education movement. Abraham Maslow (1970), in his discussion of a hierarchy of human needs, pointed out that belonging was an essential and prerequisite human need that had to be met before one could ever achieve a sense of self- worth.
Maslow posited that the needs of human beings could be divided and prioritized into five "levels." Individuals do not seek the satisfaction of a need at one level until the previous "level of need" is met. The five levels of need identified by Maslow were Physiological, Safety/Security, Belonging/Social Affiliation, Self-Esteem, and Self-Actualization. They are represented as a pyramid in Figure 1.
ABRAHAM MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
Inclusive Education
Figure 1. Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. (From Maslow, A. (1970}. Motivation and personaIity (2nd ed.). New York: Harper & Row; reprinted by permission of Harper Collins Publishers.)
Maslow maintained that our most basic need is for physiological survival: shelter warmth, food, drink, and so on. Once these physiological needs are met, individuals then are able to address the need for safety and security, including freedom from danger and absence of threat. Once safety has been assured, belonging or love, which is usually found within families, friendships, membership in associations, and within the community, then becomes a priority. Maslow stressed that only when we are anchored in community do we develop self-esteem, the need to assure ourselves of our own worth as individuals. Maslow claimed that the need for self-esteem can be met through mastery or achievement in a given field or through gaining respect or recognition from others. Once the need for self-esteem has been largely met, Masl ow stated, we will develop a new restlessness and the urge to pursue the unique gifts or talents that may be particular to that person. As Maslow stated, "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at ultimate peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature" (p. 48). Maslow referred to this final level of need as "Self-Actualization."
I believe that the majority of educators would agree that it is tremendously important for a child to develop a sense of self-worth and confidence. However, in our society, especially in the field of education, it has been assumed that a child's sense of self-worth can be developed from a sense of personal achievement that is independent of the child's sense of belonging. If we concur with Maslow, however, we see that self-worth can arise only when an individual is grounded in community. Contained within Maslow's writings is a powerful argument that belonging is one of the central pillars that has been missing from our educational structure for some time. Maslow (1970) explained:
If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, there will emerge the love and affection and belongingness needs.... Now the person will feel keenly, as never before, the absence of friends, or a sweetheart, or a wife, or children. He will hunger for affectionate relations with people in general, namely, for a place in his group or family, and he will strive with great intensity to achieve this goal....he will feel sharply the pangs of loneliness, of ostracism, of rejection of friendlessness, of rootlessness.
We have very little scientific information about the belongingness need, although this is a common theme in novels, autobiographies, poems and plays and also in the newer sociological literature. From these we know in a general way the destructive effects on children of moving too often: of disorientation: of the general over-mobility that is forced by industrialization: of being without roots, or of despising one's roots, one's origins, one's group: of being torn from one's home and family, and friends and neighbours: of being a transient or a newcomer rather than a native. We still underplay the deep importance of the neighbourhood, of one's territory, of one's clan, of one's own "kind" one's class, one's gang, one's familiar working colleagues...-
I believe that the tremendous and rapid increase in...personal growth groups and intentional communities may in part be motivated by this unsatisfied hunger for contact, for intimacy, for belongingness and by the need to overcome the widespread feelings of alienation, aloneness, strangeness, and loneliness, which have been worsened by our mobility, by the break-down of traditional groupings, the scattering of families, the generation gap, the steady urbanization and disappearance of village face-to-faceness, and the resulting shallowness of American friendship. My strong impression is also that some proportion of youth rebellion groups -- I don t know how many or how much -- is motivated by the profound hunger for groupiness, for contact, for real togetherness.... Any good society must satisfy this need, one way or another, if it is to survive and be healthy.(p. 43)
There is an enormous amount of evidence, surprisingly from the field of corporate management, that providing a person with a sense of belonging is pivotal for that person to excel. Management consultants such as Peters and Waterman (1932) outline dozens of strategies for senior managers to use to foster a sense of belonging among staff. Japanese corporations, the wonder kids of capitalism, devote huge amounts of energy and money to practices and policies (e.g., mandatory work uniforms, subsidized apartment buildings) that foster belonging among employees.
Belonging -- having a social context -- is requisite for the development of self-esteem and self-confidence. This is why Maslow posited self-esteem above belonging in his hierarchy. Without a social context in which to validate a person's perceived worth, self-worth is not internalized. The context can vary from small and concrete, as with babies, to universal and highly abstract, as with artists.
Despite the essential importance of belonging as a precursor to the development of self-esteem and the motivation to pursue education, it is interesting to note that this is the one level of Maslow's hierarchy for which schools provide little nurturance or assistance. We have practices and programs to support physiological needs (e.g., subsidized breakfast and hot lunch programs),safety needs (e.g., traffic, sex, drug and health education), learning structures to build confidence and esteem (e.g., co-operative group learning, mastery learning models with individualized objectives and performance criteria, esteem building curricular units), and specialized learning needs in a vast array of curriculum domains. Yet,, creating caring communities has not been a mission or practice in the overly tracked, segregated, exclusive schools of the 20th century.
THE INVERSION OF MASLOW'S HIERARCHY: EARNING THE RIGHT TO BELONG
Despite the wealth of research and personal experience that gives validity to Maslow's position, it is not uncommon for educators to work from the premise that achievement and mastery rather than belonging are the primary if not the sole precursors for self-esteem. As Figure 2 illustrates, the current education system, in fact, has dissected and inverted Maslow's hierarchy of needs so that belonging has been transformed from an unconditional need and right of all people into something that must be earned, something that can be achieved only by the "best" of us. Irrespective of the evidence to the contrary (e.g, high incidence of child abuse and neglect), the curricula and the structure of our schools are based on the assumption that children who come to school have had their physiological and safety needs met at home. Students, upon entering school, are immediately expected to learn curriculum. Successful mastery of school work is expected to foster the children's sense of self-worth, which in turn will enable them to join the community as "responsible citizens." Children are required, as it were, to learn their right to belong.
Inclusive Education
Figure 2: The inversion of Maslow's hierarchy of human needs in 20th century education.
I have often heard the claim in the field of education that an effective way to bolster student self-esteem is to provide students with opportunities to experience a great deal of success. Consequently, efforts are made to ensure that the school work is easy enough so students have little difficulty completing the work correctly, thereby fostering trust in their own abilities. As expected, students do begin to develop self-worth. But in the process, they also learn that their worth as individuals is contingent upon being able to jump through the prescribed academic, physical, or personal hoops.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs not only reminds us how essential it is for people to live within the context of a community, but it also shows us that the need for self-actualization necessary implies that every person has abilities that warrant specific development within themselves. In our education system, however, it is often assumed that only a minority of students are gifted or have an individual calling and are capable of self- actualization. Yet this minority has been artificially created to a large degree by the fact that most schools only see those students with exceptional academic, athletic, and artistic abilities as being deserving of the opportunity to develop their talents. Students with gifts in areas other than these typically are relegated to the world of the normal and mediocre: their wishes to have special considerations so that they may pursue their unique gifts (whether it be auto mechanics, the ability to nurture, or a fascination with nature) are seen as self-indulgent fantasies. Consequently, it is only a few privileged students who are granted the luxury to work and concentrate in areas in which they naturally excel. Ironically, because of the prevailing paradigm of our education system, the pursuits of children identified as "gifted and talented" often occur in segregated programs that can have a negative impact upon the child's sense of belonging. Thus, even when we grant children the opportunity to meet their need for "self-actualization," it is usually done at the expense of their sense of belonging.
CASUALTIES OF THE INVERSION OF MASLOW'S HIERARCHY
The view that personal achievement fosters self-worth is by no means limited to the field of education. The perception that we must earn our right to belong permeates our society. A central tenet of our culture is that we value uniformity, and we make uniformity the criteria for belonging. Moreover, we exclude people because of their diversity. Weight loss is a blatant example of the ways in which people feel driven to earn the right to belong." Most dieters engage in a form of self-talk (reinforced by weight loss commercials) that is totally consistent with the inverted hierarchy of needs in that they say, "If I lose 50 pounds and go from a size 16 to a size 10 (achievement), then I will feel better about myself (self-esteem), and perhaps then I will be able to regain the lost romance in my marriage (belonging)." Similarly, one can see how the prevalence of workaholism corresponds with the same inversion of needs. The reasoning goes, "If I work 60 hours a week (achievement) then I'll be assured of my own ability in this role (self-esteem), and I will be respected by my colleagues and will not be fired (belonging)."
As such, we now live in a society that holds forth belonging as something that is earned through academic or physical achievement, appearance, and a host of other socially valued criteria. Belonging no longer is an inherent right of being human. And our schools, being a reflection of society, perpetuate this belief.
When a school system makes belonging and acceptance conditional upon achievement, it basically leaves students with two options. They can either decide that they are incapable of attaining these expectation and therefore resign themselves to a feeling of personal inadequacy, or, they can decide to try to gain acceptance through achievement in a particular area (i.e. sports, academics, appearance). In either case, there are potential serious negative consequences for the students.
School Dropout as a Casualty
It is fairly easy to see how students who see themselves as incapable of achieving excellence develop a belief of personal unworthiness as well as a hopelessness of ever becoming worthy. Our society; including most of our schools, highly values academic achievement, physical prowess, and attractiveness. Students who do not excel in at least one of these areas are thereby devalued. These are the students who, quite understandably, drop out of school. They remove themselves from the school environment where they are devalued and sometimes enter into other, sometimes dangerous, situations in which they are valued.
Gangs as a Casualty
One environment to which some students turn is that of gangs. Here again, Maslow's hierarchy of needs provides a framework for understanding why gangs are becoming increasingly popular among today's youth. Teenage gangs satisfy each level of need in Maslow's hierarchy. When youths join gangs, their physiological needs are met: food, shelter, warmth, and their quasi-physiological needs, such as sex, heroin, and crack, also are met. Youths are provided with a sense of safety in the knowledge that if they are ever harmed by another individual or group, the other gang members will retaliate viciously against those who caused the harm. Moreover, youths are given a strong sense of belonging within the gang, and in this environment the belonging is not based on achievement but instead on simply "wearing one's colors." After passing a one-time initiation ritual, the sense of belonging provided by gangs is extremely close to unconditional. And given this almost unconditional acceptance and inclusion within a gang, the youths' feelings of self-worth naturally flourish. Anchored in this newly found sense of inclusion and self-worth, many youths begin to focus in those areas in which they excel, such as the criminal code (with all of its technicalities and loopholes), karate, stealing BMWs, extortion, and so on.
The almost comical irony is that some school districts try to tempt youths away from gangs, away from an environment of unconditional inclusion and acceptance, back into school, back into society, back into an environment where belonging and acceptance are conditional and must be earned. Furthermore, the earning must take place in a context where the youths know they have previously failed. The fact that many of these youths quickly discard the possibility of returning to school may be surprising for school officials. Maslow, however, hardly would be surprised at the youths' decision. The tragedy within our education system is that we see the continued membership in a gang as the result of a students moral deficiency, rather than seeing the school's structure and intrinsic ideology as the impetus.
If we concur with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, then we must face the credible and deeply disturbing proposition that inner city gangs are healthier environments for human beings than schools. Albeit, the values and violence within some gangs may be less than desirable. Nevertheless, schools appear to be far more damaging to the development of adolescents than gangs.
Perfectionism and Suicide as Casualties
The repercussions of conditional belonging are not limited to those students who fail to excel. There are extremely negative consequences for the "achievers" as well. When students strive to become shining scholars or all-star centers on basketball teams, they intrinsically learn that their valued membership in the school is dependent upon maintaining these standards of achievement. As a result, many students wake up each morning and face a day of ongoing pressure to be "good enough to belong," afraid that if they blow a test, miss the critical lay-up shot in the last seconds of the game, or wear the wrong kind of running shoes, their status among their peers, and possibly within the school, will be sacrificed.
Tragically, a growing number of adolescents find that the endless demand to be "good enough to belong" is beyond them and they end the struggle by taking their own lives. As we begin to recognize the process of living in a world of conditional belonging, we can better understand why students who commit suicide frequently are those we least expect. While Maslow's hierarchy of needs may not provide a complete framework for understanding and dealing with this issue, I believe the absence of belonging in our schools is a contributing factor to teenage suicide.
Of course, most "student achievers" do not take their own lives. However, we cannot minimize the stress these students feel as well. Teachers are well aware of students who are "perfectionists," obsessively driven to avoid any slight error despite continual reassurances from family and teachers that such concern is unwarranted. Here again, it is important to step back and see the student within the context of a school and a society that repeatedly gives the message that one must earn the right to belong. When community, acceptance, and belonging -- some of the most primal needs of being human -- are held out as the rewards for achievement, we cannot expect students to believe our assurances that they will be "accepted as they are." In all likelihood, we don't believe that for ourselves, as everything else in our society screams out that belonging is almost totally dependent on perfection. The implicit messages in our schools have caused perfectionism, and ironically, school personnel perceive this perfectionism as a sign of emotional instability on the part of the student.
SEGREGATED CLASSES AS A CASUALTY: FORCING CHILDREN TO EARN THE RIGHT TO BELONG
Perhaps the most glaring example of an educational practice that forces students to earn the right to belong is the maintenance of segregated special classrooms and programs. The practice of making segregated classrooms an intermediary and prerequisite step toward inclusion within regular classrooms explicitly validates the perception that belonging is something that must be earned, rather than an essential human need and a basic human right. Although the intent of segregation is to help students with disabilities learn skills and appropriate behaviour, the very act of removing students with disabilities from the other students necessarily teaches them that "they are not good enough to belong as they are" and that the privilege of belonging will be granted back to them once they have acquired an undefined number of skills. The tragic irony of self-contained classrooms is that as soon as we take away students' sense of belonging, we completely undermine their capacity to learn the skills that will enable them to belong. Herein lies the most painful "Catch-22" situation that confronts students with disabilities -- they can't belong until they learn, but they can't learn because they are prevented from belonging. This injustice is compounded by the fact that the lack of progress in a segregated class is seen as further evidence to justify the need for segregation.
It has been argued that segregated classrooms, although possibly inappropriate for students with minor or moderate disabilities, are absolutely necessary for children with severe or multiple disabilities (e.g., Jenkins, Pious, 6 Jewell, I990). It is this line of reasoning that has resulted in one of the cruelest and most insidious forms of emotional abuse that ever could be directed at students, let alone students with severe disabilities. The placement of students with severe disabilities into segregated, self-contained classrooms or programs not only excludes them from their peers and the community, but it ensures that their isolation will be permanent. It is a common practice within segregated classrooms to offer rehabilitative, communication, and life skill programs as necessary requisites for entering the community. This is done in spite of the fact that the specific attributes that have led these students to be segregated, such as physical, mental, sensory, or severe learning disabilities, cannot be eradicated to the point where the student approaches "normalcy." Consequently, the segregated students learn not only that they are not good enough to belong but that they never will be good enough to belong for their disability, and the subsequent reason for their banishment, can never be removed.
PROVIDING BELONGING WITHOUT VALUING DIVERSITY: THE INAPPROPRIATE USE OF MASLOW'S HIERARCHY TO SUPPORT INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
It is important at this juncture to issue a caution to those who might be inclined to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a rationale for including students with intensive educational needs in local school general education programs. If inclusion and belonging are adopted because people see an integrated educational experience as a more effective way to teach skills and appropriate behaviour, then inclusion or belonging opportunities become nothing more than an effective strategy to minimize disabilities. The underlying assumption of this view of inclusion or integration is that children and adults with disabilities should be as "normal" as possible. When we see heterogeneous education in this way, we give legitimacy to a world in which uniformity and perfection are valued if not idolized. In this understanding of integration, belonging and achievements still are regarded as prerequisite steps to self-worth. The children are placed in settings where they will feel are they belong so that they might learn the prescribed skills to become "normal" enough to really belong. Again, Maslow's concept of belonging becomes misconstrued and inverted in a different but fundamentally inappropriate way, and its effect upon children is no less damaging.
Ail children are children. The perception that some children are normal and others are deficient and therefore need to be repaired in some way is still a concomitant of a society that values uniformity rather than diversity. The potential of heterogeneous education lies in the possibility of redefining society's concept of "normalcy." When children are given the right to belong, they are given a right to their diversity. They are wholly welcomed into our neighbourhoods as ones who enrich our lives, without the construction of rehabilitative hoops through which they must jump in order to become "normal enough" to belong
Moreover, I believe that good educators feel it is their responsibility to help each student discover what his or her individual strengths and capacities are and then facilitate opportunities for him or her to concentrate and excel in those areas. To mold students into carbon copies of normalcy, all having uniform abilities, is a betrayal of the awesome wonder of an individual. To attempt to do the same to students with disabilities is no less of a travesty.
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION: AN OPPORTUNITY TO ACTUALIZE MASLOW'S HIERARCHY AND REDISCOVER BELONGING AS A HUMAN RIGHT
In the 1950s, my motivation for advocating for the inclusion of students with severe disabilities within regular classrooms came out of a sense of social injustice. I believed that students, by being placed in segregated classrooms or programs, were being denied the opportunity to learn socially appropriate behaviour and develop friendships with their peers. In the intervening time, however, I have become increasingly alarmed at the severity of the social problems in our schools. Academic averages are plummeting, the drop-out rate is increasing, and teen pregnancy is be-coming a major social concern. Teenage suicide is increasing at an exponential rate and now has become the second leading cause of adolescent death in the United States and in Canada ((Health & Welfare Canada, 1987., Patterson, Purkey, & Parker, 1986). Extreme violence, drug dependency, gangs, anorexia nervosa, and depression among students have risen to the point that these problems now are perceived almost as an expected part of high school culture. The job description of teacher now vacillates between educator and psychotherapist and at times becomes even that of benevolent sorcerer. University and corporate establishments also are becoming increasingly vocal about the lack of preparedness of high school graduates. It is little wonder that principals are attending high-powered corporate seminars on crisis management rather than the more sedate presentations on curriculum implementation.
What we are witnessing, I believe, are the symptoms of a society in which self-hatred has become an epidemic. Feelings of personal inadequacy have become so common in our schools and our culture that we have begun to assume that it is part of the nature of being human. It is certainly questionable whether our society will be able to survive if this self-hatred is allowed to flourish.
In attempting to counter this crisis, many supposed pundits of educational reform are claming that we are in desperate need of an immediate return to those values consistent with the words, "standards," "achievement," and "curriculum." But before we run full speed back-ward, grasping at these hard words and clutching them close to our bosom, it may be wise to pause, if only for a moment, to consider that our social malady may stem not from the lack of achievement, but from the lack of belonging.
The degree of underachievement and unfulfilled potential in our society may not be the result of widespread laziness. It may result from a sense of apathy, apathy that so often accompanies the constant demand to be perfect enough to belong. What is needed in our society and especially our education system is not more rigorous demands to achieve and master so that our youth will move closer to the idealized form of perfection. What is needed is a collective effort among all of us to search for ways to foster a sense of belonging in our schools, not only for students, but for the staff as well. For when we are able to rely on our peers' individual strengths rather than expecting to attain complete mastery in all areas, then belonging begins to precede achievement, and we may be welcomed into community not because of our perfection, but because of our inherent natural and individual capacities.
Inclusive education represents a very concrete and manageable step that can be taken in our school systems to ensure that aII students begin to learn that belonging is a right, not a privileged status that is earned. If we are to create schools in which students feel welcomed and part of a community, then we must begin by creating schools that welcome the diversity of all children.
The fundamental principle of inclusive education is the valuing of diversity within the human community. Every person has a contribution to offer to the world. Yet, in our society, we have drawn narrow parameters around what is valued and how one makes a contribution. The ways in which people with disabilities can contribute to the world may be less apparent: they often fall outside of the goods and service-oriented, success-driven society. Consequently, it is concluded that no gift is present. So, many educators set about trying to minimize the disability, believing that by doing so their students will move closer to be-coming contributing members of society.
When inclusive education is fully embraced, we abandon the idea that children have to become "normal" in order to contribute to the world. Instead, we search for and nourish the gifts that are inherent in all people. We begin to look beyond typical ways of becoming valued members of the community, and in doing so, begin to realize the achievable goal of providing all children with an authentic sense of belonging.
As a collective commitment to educate alI children takes hold and "typical"" students realize that "those kids" do belong in their schools and classes, typical students will benefit by learning that their own membership in the class and society is something that has to do with human rights rather than academic or physical ability. In this way, it is conceivable that the students of inclusive schools will be liberated from the tyranny of earning the right to belong. It is ironic that the students who were believed to have the least worth and value may be the only ones who can guide us off the path of social destruction.
REFERENCES
Health and Welfare Canada. (1987). Suicide in Canada: Report of the national task force on suicide in Canada (Catalogue No. H39-107/1987E). Ottawa, Ontario: Statistics Canada.
Jenkins,J., Pious, C., Jewell, M., (l990). Special education and the regular education initiative. ExceptionaI Children. 56 479-491.
Lipsky, D.K., & Gartner. A. (Eds.). (1989). Beyond separate education: Quality education for all. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
Maslow, A. (1970}. Motivation and personaIity. New York: Harper & Row.
Patterson, J., Purkey, S., & Parker. J. (1986). Productive school systems for a nonrational world. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Peters, T., & Waterman, R. (l982). In search of excellence: Lessons from America's best run companies. New York: Harper & Row.
Stainback, S., Stainback, W., & Forest, M.(Eds.}. (l989}. Educating all students in the mainstream of regular education. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
Wagner, M. (1989). Youth with disabilities during transition: An overview and description of findings from the national longitudinal transition study. In J. Chadsey-Rusch (Ed.), Transition institute at Illinois: Project director's fourth annual meeting (pp. 24-52} Champaign: University of lllinois.
Axis Consultation and Training Ltd
Originally published in: Villa, R., Thousand, J., Stainback, W. & Stainback, S. Restructuring for Caring & Effective Education. Baltimore: Paul Brookes, 1992.
© Copyright 1992 Paul H. Brookes Publishers.
Newtonian principles of physics were regarded as true until Einstein demonstrated that they provided an inadequate explanation of the laws of nature. Similarly, Freudian analysts viewed a woman's admission of being sexually abused by her father as a neurotic fantasy stemming from an "Electra complex." Only recently have other forms of therapy shown that women are accurate in their accounts of being abused. In every field of knowledge, anomalies such as these arise that call current practices and "paradigms" (i.e. world views) into question and necessitate the creation of new paradigms and related practices. It is precisely through this process that a body of knowledge develops. Such a process is now taking place in the field of special education. Anomalies have arisen that seriously call into question the validity of segregating students with specific physical, intellectual, or emotional needs. Moreover, these anomalies demand that new paradigms be created and embraced.
THE SPECIAL EDUCATION PARADIGM: SKILLS AS A PREREQUISITE TO INCLUSION
In the United States, P.L. 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, and the concept of the least restrictive environment (LRE) initially were seen as meaningful steps toward including children with physical, intellectuaI, and emotional needs within regular classrooms. In actuality, however, this legislation and its embedded concept of LRE still gave credence to segregated, self-contained classrooms. Although lip service was given to the idea that students would be integrated as much as possible, the underlying paradigm supporting the maintenance of the continuum of services was that students with severe, or even moderate, impairments needed to learn and demonstrate basic skills (e.g., staying quiet in class, going to the washroom independently,) in self-contained classrooms before they could, if ever, be allowed to enter regular classrooms. This educational paradigm can be represented as follows:
STUDENT --> skills --> regular classroom
This paradigm has been the basis for the practice of placing students with moderate or severe disabilities in segregated, self-contained classrooms or programs in which the curriculum focus is basic skills instruction. As a result, segregated classrooms generally have been seen as a necessary educational option that must be maintained to meet the needs of "some" students.
ANOMALIES IN THE SEGREGATION PARADIGM: LACK OF PROGRESS
The belief in the need for segregation has created a situation in which students with intensive physical, intellectual, or emotional needs enter the school system at the age of 5 or 6 and are placed in self-contained classrooms or programs in which life skills, age-appropriate behaviour, and possibly social interaction with other students are primary goals. These students typically stay in the school system for 15-18 years and, despite the commitment of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the majority fail to master life skills or appropriate behaviour and remain socially isolated throughout their school years. These students have not progressed at a rate that allows for a successful transition into community life (Lipsky & Gartner, 1989., Stainback, Stainback, & Forest, 1989., Wagner, 1989). Although teachers and teaching assistants may be fully committed to helping students acquire basic skills, many students seem disinterested, unwilling, or incapable of learning the skills. Moreover, students who do master certain skills often fail to retain the newly acquired skills or cannot replicate them in situations outside of the classroom. As a consequence, many "graduates" of self-contained classrooms enter directly into sheltered workshops or segregated prevocational training programs where they must continue to practice the same basic life skills. The result is that people with disabilities, unable to make the transition into community life, spend their years continuously preparing for Iife, a modern version of Sysiphus,
Often the lack of student progress is blamed on the student. Students are seen as having such severe disabilities that they are incapable of learning appropriate behaviour and skills. However, this answer is losing credibility. Research and experience are showing that students in segregated programs do imitate and learn, but often what they imitate and learn is the inappropriate behaviour of their classmates. Furthermore, there is growing documentation of students who seemed incapable of learning appropriate behaviour and skills in segregated settings achieving these previously unattainable goals once integrated into regular classrooms. It seems, then, that the adherence to current paradigms within special education has resulted in the creation and maintenance of what I term "retarded immersion" classes. Students are immersed in an environment of "retarded behaviour" and learn how to be retarded.
A far more reasonable explanation for the lack of student progress has to do with the absence of motivation. There are very few, if any, rewards or payoffs to the student for learning new activities in this environment. Students don't pass retarded immersion and exit to general education: they can't even fail retarded immersion. In fact, they are sometimes even punished for being successful. For example I have seen situations where students have been required to stack blocks in an effort to improve fine motor control. The students successfully complete this task only to be given smaller blocks. Consequently, the task becomes more difficult until it is beyond the students' capability. We ask children to spend their entire day doing tasks that are meaningless and difficult and then wonder why very little is learned in retarded immersion.
MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS: A PARADIGM FOR MOTIVATING LEARNING
In sum, segregated programs and classrooms have failed to teach students appropriate behaviour and skills. Environments where students model, learn, and practice inappropriate or meaningless behaviours have not been successful in preparing individuals for community life. These anomalies challenge the validity of segregation as an educational practice and require new paradigms to be developed -- paradigms that incorporate a motivation to learn.
Educators have a choice. We can either continue to blame the lack of progress in segregated classrooms on the severity of the disability, or we can have the courage and integrity to seriously question whether there is, in fact, a more effective way to prepare students with disabilities to enter the community after graduation.
In the 1980s, it became increasingly apparent that a different paradigm was needed to accomplish the goals set forth for special education. The special education practices of the past were founded on an old paradigm where skills were seen as a prerequisite to inclusion or integration. An alternate paradigm reverses this order, and requires educators to temporarily abandon their emphasis on skills and place the child in the regular classroom with appropriate support. The rationale is that a student's desire to belong, to be "one of the kids," provides the motivation to learn new skills, a motivation noticeably absent in segregated classrooms. This new paradigm could be visually represented as follows:
STUDENT ==> regular classroom ==> skills
(with support)
This paradigm, with its recognition of the importance of belonging, is not a new concept introduced with the inclusive education movement. Abraham Maslow (1970), in his discussion of a hierarchy of human needs, pointed out that belonging was an essential and prerequisite human need that had to be met before one could ever achieve a sense of self- worth.
Maslow posited that the needs of human beings could be divided and prioritized into five "levels." Individuals do not seek the satisfaction of a need at one level until the previous "level of need" is met. The five levels of need identified by Maslow were Physiological, Safety/Security, Belonging/Social Affiliation, Self-Esteem, and Self-Actualization. They are represented as a pyramid in Figure 1.
ABRAHAM MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
Inclusive Education
Figure 1. Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. (From Maslow, A. (1970}. Motivation and personaIity (2nd ed.). New York: Harper & Row; reprinted by permission of Harper Collins Publishers.)
Maslow maintained that our most basic need is for physiological survival: shelter warmth, food, drink, and so on. Once these physiological needs are met, individuals then are able to address the need for safety and security, including freedom from danger and absence of threat. Once safety has been assured, belonging or love, which is usually found within families, friendships, membership in associations, and within the community, then becomes a priority. Maslow stressed that only when we are anchored in community do we develop self-esteem, the need to assure ourselves of our own worth as individuals. Maslow claimed that the need for self-esteem can be met through mastery or achievement in a given field or through gaining respect or recognition from others. Once the need for self-esteem has been largely met, Masl ow stated, we will develop a new restlessness and the urge to pursue the unique gifts or talents that may be particular to that person. As Maslow stated, "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at ultimate peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature" (p. 48). Maslow referred to this final level of need as "Self-Actualization."
I believe that the majority of educators would agree that it is tremendously important for a child to develop a sense of self-worth and confidence. However, in our society, especially in the field of education, it has been assumed that a child's sense of self-worth can be developed from a sense of personal achievement that is independent of the child's sense of belonging. If we concur with Maslow, however, we see that self-worth can arise only when an individual is grounded in community. Contained within Maslow's writings is a powerful argument that belonging is one of the central pillars that has been missing from our educational structure for some time. Maslow (1970) explained:
If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, there will emerge the love and affection and belongingness needs.... Now the person will feel keenly, as never before, the absence of friends, or a sweetheart, or a wife, or children. He will hunger for affectionate relations with people in general, namely, for a place in his group or family, and he will strive with great intensity to achieve this goal....he will feel sharply the pangs of loneliness, of ostracism, of rejection of friendlessness, of rootlessness.
We have very little scientific information about the belongingness need, although this is a common theme in novels, autobiographies, poems and plays and also in the newer sociological literature. From these we know in a general way the destructive effects on children of moving too often: of disorientation: of the general over-mobility that is forced by industrialization: of being without roots, or of despising one's roots, one's origins, one's group: of being torn from one's home and family, and friends and neighbours: of being a transient or a newcomer rather than a native. We still underplay the deep importance of the neighbourhood, of one's territory, of one's clan, of one's own "kind" one's class, one's gang, one's familiar working colleagues...-
I believe that the tremendous and rapid increase in...personal growth groups and intentional communities may in part be motivated by this unsatisfied hunger for contact, for intimacy, for belongingness and by the need to overcome the widespread feelings of alienation, aloneness, strangeness, and loneliness, which have been worsened by our mobility, by the break-down of traditional groupings, the scattering of families, the generation gap, the steady urbanization and disappearance of village face-to-faceness, and the resulting shallowness of American friendship. My strong impression is also that some proportion of youth rebellion groups -- I don t know how many or how much -- is motivated by the profound hunger for groupiness, for contact, for real togetherness.... Any good society must satisfy this need, one way or another, if it is to survive and be healthy.(p. 43)
There is an enormous amount of evidence, surprisingly from the field of corporate management, that providing a person with a sense of belonging is pivotal for that person to excel. Management consultants such as Peters and Waterman (1932) outline dozens of strategies for senior managers to use to foster a sense of belonging among staff. Japanese corporations, the wonder kids of capitalism, devote huge amounts of energy and money to practices and policies (e.g., mandatory work uniforms, subsidized apartment buildings) that foster belonging among employees.
Belonging -- having a social context -- is requisite for the development of self-esteem and self-confidence. This is why Maslow posited self-esteem above belonging in his hierarchy. Without a social context in which to validate a person's perceived worth, self-worth is not internalized. The context can vary from small and concrete, as with babies, to universal and highly abstract, as with artists.
Despite the essential importance of belonging as a precursor to the development of self-esteem and the motivation to pursue education, it is interesting to note that this is the one level of Maslow's hierarchy for which schools provide little nurturance or assistance. We have practices and programs to support physiological needs (e.g., subsidized breakfast and hot lunch programs),safety needs (e.g., traffic, sex, drug and health education), learning structures to build confidence and esteem (e.g., co-operative group learning, mastery learning models with individualized objectives and performance criteria, esteem building curricular units), and specialized learning needs in a vast array of curriculum domains. Yet,, creating caring communities has not been a mission or practice in the overly tracked, segregated, exclusive schools of the 20th century.
THE INVERSION OF MASLOW'S HIERARCHY: EARNING THE RIGHT TO BELONG
Despite the wealth of research and personal experience that gives validity to Maslow's position, it is not uncommon for educators to work from the premise that achievement and mastery rather than belonging are the primary if not the sole precursors for self-esteem. As Figure 2 illustrates, the current education system, in fact, has dissected and inverted Maslow's hierarchy of needs so that belonging has been transformed from an unconditional need and right of all people into something that must be earned, something that can be achieved only by the "best" of us. Irrespective of the evidence to the contrary (e.g, high incidence of child abuse and neglect), the curricula and the structure of our schools are based on the assumption that children who come to school have had their physiological and safety needs met at home. Students, upon entering school, are immediately expected to learn curriculum. Successful mastery of school work is expected to foster the children's sense of self-worth, which in turn will enable them to join the community as "responsible citizens." Children are required, as it were, to learn their right to belong.
Inclusive Education
Figure 2: The inversion of Maslow's hierarchy of human needs in 20th century education.
I have often heard the claim in the field of education that an effective way to bolster student self-esteem is to provide students with opportunities to experience a great deal of success. Consequently, efforts are made to ensure that the school work is easy enough so students have little difficulty completing the work correctly, thereby fostering trust in their own abilities. As expected, students do begin to develop self-worth. But in the process, they also learn that their worth as individuals is contingent upon being able to jump through the prescribed academic, physical, or personal hoops.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs not only reminds us how essential it is for people to live within the context of a community, but it also shows us that the need for self-actualization necessary implies that every person has abilities that warrant specific development within themselves. In our education system, however, it is often assumed that only a minority of students are gifted or have an individual calling and are capable of self- actualization. Yet this minority has been artificially created to a large degree by the fact that most schools only see those students with exceptional academic, athletic, and artistic abilities as being deserving of the opportunity to develop their talents. Students with gifts in areas other than these typically are relegated to the world of the normal and mediocre: their wishes to have special considerations so that they may pursue their unique gifts (whether it be auto mechanics, the ability to nurture, or a fascination with nature) are seen as self-indulgent fantasies. Consequently, it is only a few privileged students who are granted the luxury to work and concentrate in areas in which they naturally excel. Ironically, because of the prevailing paradigm of our education system, the pursuits of children identified as "gifted and talented" often occur in segregated programs that can have a negative impact upon the child's sense of belonging. Thus, even when we grant children the opportunity to meet their need for "self-actualization," it is usually done at the expense of their sense of belonging.
CASUALTIES OF THE INVERSION OF MASLOW'S HIERARCHY
The view that personal achievement fosters self-worth is by no means limited to the field of education. The perception that we must earn our right to belong permeates our society. A central tenet of our culture is that we value uniformity, and we make uniformity the criteria for belonging. Moreover, we exclude people because of their diversity. Weight loss is a blatant example of the ways in which people feel driven to earn the right to belong." Most dieters engage in a form of self-talk (reinforced by weight loss commercials) that is totally consistent with the inverted hierarchy of needs in that they say, "If I lose 50 pounds and go from a size 16 to a size 10 (achievement), then I will feel better about myself (self-esteem), and perhaps then I will be able to regain the lost romance in my marriage (belonging)." Similarly, one can see how the prevalence of workaholism corresponds with the same inversion of needs. The reasoning goes, "If I work 60 hours a week (achievement) then I'll be assured of my own ability in this role (self-esteem), and I will be respected by my colleagues and will not be fired (belonging)."
As such, we now live in a society that holds forth belonging as something that is earned through academic or physical achievement, appearance, and a host of other socially valued criteria. Belonging no longer is an inherent right of being human. And our schools, being a reflection of society, perpetuate this belief.
When a school system makes belonging and acceptance conditional upon achievement, it basically leaves students with two options. They can either decide that they are incapable of attaining these expectation and therefore resign themselves to a feeling of personal inadequacy, or, they can decide to try to gain acceptance through achievement in a particular area (i.e. sports, academics, appearance). In either case, there are potential serious negative consequences for the students.
School Dropout as a Casualty
It is fairly easy to see how students who see themselves as incapable of achieving excellence develop a belief of personal unworthiness as well as a hopelessness of ever becoming worthy. Our society; including most of our schools, highly values academic achievement, physical prowess, and attractiveness. Students who do not excel in at least one of these areas are thereby devalued. These are the students who, quite understandably, drop out of school. They remove themselves from the school environment where they are devalued and sometimes enter into other, sometimes dangerous, situations in which they are valued.
Gangs as a Casualty
One environment to which some students turn is that of gangs. Here again, Maslow's hierarchy of needs provides a framework for understanding why gangs are becoming increasingly popular among today's youth. Teenage gangs satisfy each level of need in Maslow's hierarchy. When youths join gangs, their physiological needs are met: food, shelter, warmth, and their quasi-physiological needs, such as sex, heroin, and crack, also are met. Youths are provided with a sense of safety in the knowledge that if they are ever harmed by another individual or group, the other gang members will retaliate viciously against those who caused the harm. Moreover, youths are given a strong sense of belonging within the gang, and in this environment the belonging is not based on achievement but instead on simply "wearing one's colors." After passing a one-time initiation ritual, the sense of belonging provided by gangs is extremely close to unconditional. And given this almost unconditional acceptance and inclusion within a gang, the youths' feelings of self-worth naturally flourish. Anchored in this newly found sense of inclusion and self-worth, many youths begin to focus in those areas in which they excel, such as the criminal code (with all of its technicalities and loopholes), karate, stealing BMWs, extortion, and so on.
The almost comical irony is that some school districts try to tempt youths away from gangs, away from an environment of unconditional inclusion and acceptance, back into school, back into society, back into an environment where belonging and acceptance are conditional and must be earned. Furthermore, the earning must take place in a context where the youths know they have previously failed. The fact that many of these youths quickly discard the possibility of returning to school may be surprising for school officials. Maslow, however, hardly would be surprised at the youths' decision. The tragedy within our education system is that we see the continued membership in a gang as the result of a students moral deficiency, rather than seeing the school's structure and intrinsic ideology as the impetus.
If we concur with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, then we must face the credible and deeply disturbing proposition that inner city gangs are healthier environments for human beings than schools. Albeit, the values and violence within some gangs may be less than desirable. Nevertheless, schools appear to be far more damaging to the development of adolescents than gangs.
Perfectionism and Suicide as Casualties
The repercussions of conditional belonging are not limited to those students who fail to excel. There are extremely negative consequences for the "achievers" as well. When students strive to become shining scholars or all-star centers on basketball teams, they intrinsically learn that their valued membership in the school is dependent upon maintaining these standards of achievement. As a result, many students wake up each morning and face a day of ongoing pressure to be "good enough to belong," afraid that if they blow a test, miss the critical lay-up shot in the last seconds of the game, or wear the wrong kind of running shoes, their status among their peers, and possibly within the school, will be sacrificed.
Tragically, a growing number of adolescents find that the endless demand to be "good enough to belong" is beyond them and they end the struggle by taking their own lives. As we begin to recognize the process of living in a world of conditional belonging, we can better understand why students who commit suicide frequently are those we least expect. While Maslow's hierarchy of needs may not provide a complete framework for understanding and dealing with this issue, I believe the absence of belonging in our schools is a contributing factor to teenage suicide.
Of course, most "student achievers" do not take their own lives. However, we cannot minimize the stress these students feel as well. Teachers are well aware of students who are "perfectionists," obsessively driven to avoid any slight error despite continual reassurances from family and teachers that such concern is unwarranted. Here again, it is important to step back and see the student within the context of a school and a society that repeatedly gives the message that one must earn the right to belong. When community, acceptance, and belonging -- some of the most primal needs of being human -- are held out as the rewards for achievement, we cannot expect students to believe our assurances that they will be "accepted as they are." In all likelihood, we don't believe that for ourselves, as everything else in our society screams out that belonging is almost totally dependent on perfection. The implicit messages in our schools have caused perfectionism, and ironically, school personnel perceive this perfectionism as a sign of emotional instability on the part of the student.
SEGREGATED CLASSES AS A CASUALTY: FORCING CHILDREN TO EARN THE RIGHT TO BELONG
Perhaps the most glaring example of an educational practice that forces students to earn the right to belong is the maintenance of segregated special classrooms and programs. The practice of making segregated classrooms an intermediary and prerequisite step toward inclusion within regular classrooms explicitly validates the perception that belonging is something that must be earned, rather than an essential human need and a basic human right. Although the intent of segregation is to help students with disabilities learn skills and appropriate behaviour, the very act of removing students with disabilities from the other students necessarily teaches them that "they are not good enough to belong as they are" and that the privilege of belonging will be granted back to them once they have acquired an undefined number of skills. The tragic irony of self-contained classrooms is that as soon as we take away students' sense of belonging, we completely undermine their capacity to learn the skills that will enable them to belong. Herein lies the most painful "Catch-22" situation that confronts students with disabilities -- they can't belong until they learn, but they can't learn because they are prevented from belonging. This injustice is compounded by the fact that the lack of progress in a segregated class is seen as further evidence to justify the need for segregation.
It has been argued that segregated classrooms, although possibly inappropriate for students with minor or moderate disabilities, are absolutely necessary for children with severe or multiple disabilities (e.g., Jenkins, Pious, 6 Jewell, I990). It is this line of reasoning that has resulted in one of the cruelest and most insidious forms of emotional abuse that ever could be directed at students, let alone students with severe disabilities. The placement of students with severe disabilities into segregated, self-contained classrooms or programs not only excludes them from their peers and the community, but it ensures that their isolation will be permanent. It is a common practice within segregated classrooms to offer rehabilitative, communication, and life skill programs as necessary requisites for entering the community. This is done in spite of the fact that the specific attributes that have led these students to be segregated, such as physical, mental, sensory, or severe learning disabilities, cannot be eradicated to the point where the student approaches "normalcy." Consequently, the segregated students learn not only that they are not good enough to belong but that they never will be good enough to belong for their disability, and the subsequent reason for their banishment, can never be removed.
PROVIDING BELONGING WITHOUT VALUING DIVERSITY: THE INAPPROPRIATE USE OF MASLOW'S HIERARCHY TO SUPPORT INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
It is important at this juncture to issue a caution to those who might be inclined to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a rationale for including students with intensive educational needs in local school general education programs. If inclusion and belonging are adopted because people see an integrated educational experience as a more effective way to teach skills and appropriate behaviour, then inclusion or belonging opportunities become nothing more than an effective strategy to minimize disabilities. The underlying assumption of this view of inclusion or integration is that children and adults with disabilities should be as "normal" as possible. When we see heterogeneous education in this way, we give legitimacy to a world in which uniformity and perfection are valued if not idolized. In this understanding of integration, belonging and achievements still are regarded as prerequisite steps to self-worth. The children are placed in settings where they will feel are they belong so that they might learn the prescribed skills to become "normal" enough to really belong. Again, Maslow's concept of belonging becomes misconstrued and inverted in a different but fundamentally inappropriate way, and its effect upon children is no less damaging.
Ail children are children. The perception that some children are normal and others are deficient and therefore need to be repaired in some way is still a concomitant of a society that values uniformity rather than diversity. The potential of heterogeneous education lies in the possibility of redefining society's concept of "normalcy." When children are given the right to belong, they are given a right to their diversity. They are wholly welcomed into our neighbourhoods as ones who enrich our lives, without the construction of rehabilitative hoops through which they must jump in order to become "normal enough" to belong
Moreover, I believe that good educators feel it is their responsibility to help each student discover what his or her individual strengths and capacities are and then facilitate opportunities for him or her to concentrate and excel in those areas. To mold students into carbon copies of normalcy, all having uniform abilities, is a betrayal of the awesome wonder of an individual. To attempt to do the same to students with disabilities is no less of a travesty.
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION: AN OPPORTUNITY TO ACTUALIZE MASLOW'S HIERARCHY AND REDISCOVER BELONGING AS A HUMAN RIGHT
In the 1950s, my motivation for advocating for the inclusion of students with severe disabilities within regular classrooms came out of a sense of social injustice. I believed that students, by being placed in segregated classrooms or programs, were being denied the opportunity to learn socially appropriate behaviour and develop friendships with their peers. In the intervening time, however, I have become increasingly alarmed at the severity of the social problems in our schools. Academic averages are plummeting, the drop-out rate is increasing, and teen pregnancy is be-coming a major social concern. Teenage suicide is increasing at an exponential rate and now has become the second leading cause of adolescent death in the United States and in Canada ((Health & Welfare Canada, 1987., Patterson, Purkey, & Parker, 1986). Extreme violence, drug dependency, gangs, anorexia nervosa, and depression among students have risen to the point that these problems now are perceived almost as an expected part of high school culture. The job description of teacher now vacillates between educator and psychotherapist and at times becomes even that of benevolent sorcerer. University and corporate establishments also are becoming increasingly vocal about the lack of preparedness of high school graduates. It is little wonder that principals are attending high-powered corporate seminars on crisis management rather than the more sedate presentations on curriculum implementation.
What we are witnessing, I believe, are the symptoms of a society in which self-hatred has become an epidemic. Feelings of personal inadequacy have become so common in our schools and our culture that we have begun to assume that it is part of the nature of being human. It is certainly questionable whether our society will be able to survive if this self-hatred is allowed to flourish.
In attempting to counter this crisis, many supposed pundits of educational reform are claming that we are in desperate need of an immediate return to those values consistent with the words, "standards," "achievement," and "curriculum." But before we run full speed back-ward, grasping at these hard words and clutching them close to our bosom, it may be wise to pause, if only for a moment, to consider that our social malady may stem not from the lack of achievement, but from the lack of belonging.
The degree of underachievement and unfulfilled potential in our society may not be the result of widespread laziness. It may result from a sense of apathy, apathy that so often accompanies the constant demand to be perfect enough to belong. What is needed in our society and especially our education system is not more rigorous demands to achieve and master so that our youth will move closer to the idealized form of perfection. What is needed is a collective effort among all of us to search for ways to foster a sense of belonging in our schools, not only for students, but for the staff as well. For when we are able to rely on our peers' individual strengths rather than expecting to attain complete mastery in all areas, then belonging begins to precede achievement, and we may be welcomed into community not because of our perfection, but because of our inherent natural and individual capacities.
Inclusive education represents a very concrete and manageable step that can be taken in our school systems to ensure that aII students begin to learn that belonging is a right, not a privileged status that is earned. If we are to create schools in which students feel welcomed and part of a community, then we must begin by creating schools that welcome the diversity of all children.
The fundamental principle of inclusive education is the valuing of diversity within the human community. Every person has a contribution to offer to the world. Yet, in our society, we have drawn narrow parameters around what is valued and how one makes a contribution. The ways in which people with disabilities can contribute to the world may be less apparent: they often fall outside of the goods and service-oriented, success-driven society. Consequently, it is concluded that no gift is present. So, many educators set about trying to minimize the disability, believing that by doing so their students will move closer to be-coming contributing members of society.
When inclusive education is fully embraced, we abandon the idea that children have to become "normal" in order to contribute to the world. Instead, we search for and nourish the gifts that are inherent in all people. We begin to look beyond typical ways of becoming valued members of the community, and in doing so, begin to realize the achievable goal of providing all children with an authentic sense of belonging.
As a collective commitment to educate alI children takes hold and "typical"" students realize that "those kids" do belong in their schools and classes, typical students will benefit by learning that their own membership in the class and society is something that has to do with human rights rather than academic or physical ability. In this way, it is conceivable that the students of inclusive schools will be liberated from the tyranny of earning the right to belong. It is ironic that the students who were believed to have the least worth and value may be the only ones who can guide us off the path of social destruction.
REFERENCES
Health and Welfare Canada. (1987). Suicide in Canada: Report of the national task force on suicide in Canada (Catalogue No. H39-107/1987E). Ottawa, Ontario: Statistics Canada.
Jenkins,J., Pious, C., Jewell, M., (l990). Special education and the regular education initiative. ExceptionaI Children. 56 479-491.
Lipsky, D.K., & Gartner. A. (Eds.). (1989). Beyond separate education: Quality education for all. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
Maslow, A. (1970}. Motivation and personaIity. New York: Harper & Row.
Patterson, J., Purkey, S., & Parker. J. (1986). Productive school systems for a nonrational world. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Peters, T., & Waterman, R. (l982). In search of excellence: Lessons from America's best run companies. New York: Harper & Row.
Stainback, S., Stainback, W., & Forest, M.(Eds.}. (l989}. Educating all students in the mainstream of regular education. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
Wagner, M. (1989). Youth with disabilities during transition: An overview and description of findings from the national longitudinal transition study. In J. Chadsey-Rusch (Ed.), Transition institute at Illinois: Project director's fourth annual meeting (pp. 24-52} Champaign: University of lllinois.
THE HIGHEST STATE OF BEING AND KNOWING
Rodney H. Clarken
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
American Educational Research Association
New Orleans, April 4-9, 1988
Abstract
This paper identifies what are considered the most influential individuals in human history: Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, and then identifies a more recent individual of similar historicity and qualities--Baha'u'llah. Each of their individual conceptions of the highest state of being and knowing is briefly presented and then commonalities of their conceptualizations discussed. Each proposes a state that might be decribed as selflessness and detachment from the world. The present-day conceptions of human development by Piaget, Maslow, Kohlberg and Wilber are presented and compared to the highest state of being and knowing proposed by the great individuals earlier in the paper.
THE HIGHEST STATE OF BEING AND KNOWING
by
Rodney H. Clarken
Some years ago in a graduate research course I was taking, I had an experience that had a great effect upon me. The professor emeritus teaching the course did something that both shocked and embarassed me: he started class with a prayer. I was shocked that a professor would do such a thing and embarassed for him because he was obviously out of touch with modern-day university life.
In 1986, while attending the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in San Fransisco, I had a similar experience. I attended a session in which the paper, Emptiness: A Transcultural Goal of Wholistic Education (Waks, 1986) was presented. I was surprised to hear such a paper at AERA and I was embarassed for the presenter, as he obviously seemed out of touch with what was going on in the rest of the sessions, but like my research professor, did not seem to know it or be concerned about it.
After each of these experiences I pondered over why I felt the way I did, because I actually believed in what they were doing and saying. Each of these experiences led me to further explore myself, my convictions and my way of doing things. This paper is one of the results of that exploration.
In the paper, Emptiness: A Transcultural Goal of Wholistic Education (Waks, 1986) it was proposed that emptiness is a common idea to the teachings of Socrates, Christ and Buddha, and as such represented a common experience that could serve as a transcultural goal of wholistic education.
This paper identifies what are considered the most influential individuals in human history: Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, and then identifies a more recent individual of similar historicity and qualities--Baha'u'llah. These people are called paradigmatic individuals. Each of their individual conceptions of the highest state of being and knowing is briefly presented and then the commonalities of their conceptualizations discussed. Each proposes a state that might be decribed as selflessness and detachment from the world. The present-day conceptions of human development by Piaget, Maslow, Kohlberg and Wilber are presented and compared to the highest state of being and knowing proposed by the paradigmatic individuals.
Paradigmatic Individuals
In his first volume of works entitled The Great Philosophers, Karl Jaspers (1957/1962), "one of the most seminal minds in the philosophy of the twentieth century" (Schilipp, 1957, p. xi), identifies what he feels are the most influential people in the history of the world. From all the people who have ever lived, he beleives that four stand out from all of the others in the effect their lives have had on the course of human thought and history. He calls these four "paradigmatic individuals". A paradigm is a pattern or example and these four "paradigmatic individuals" serve as examples or paradigms to humanity. Their teachings are models that have had the greatest influence on the history of man. They are Socrates, Buddha, Confucius and Jesus. Jaspers says this about them:
"The four paradigmatic individuals have exerted a historical influence of incomparable scope and depth. Other men of great stature may have been equally important for smaller groups. But when it comes to broad, enduring influence over many hundreds of years, they are so far above all others that they must be singled out if we are to form a clear view of the world's history. (p. 13)
These men set norms by their attitudes, actions, experience of being, and their imperatives. In delving to the heart of their own problems, subsequent philopsoghers have looked to these thinkers. Each in his sphere, they have all exerted an enormous influence on later philosophy. (pp. 99-100)
Jaspers feels that only one other person could be compared to these four individuals based on his historical influence. That person is Muhammad. The impact and quality of Muhammad's life, evidenced by the effects he has had on present-day thought and civilization, qualifies him to be regarded as one of greatest individuals of history. As such, he will be considered along with Jasper's paradigmatic individuals.
Baha'u'llah, who lived during the last century, has not yet had the possibility to have the historical influence of any of the above indivdiduals, but based upon his life and teachings, he could be considered the paradigmatic individual of current times. For this reason, he will also be considered along with the other paradigmatic individuals.
These individuals represent the greatest philosophical and religious ideologies of both the East and the West. They all suffered as a result of their ideas, and two were
put to death because of their teachings. Each proposed that the highest state of being and knowing is the overcoming of self and worldy attachments and limitations. Socrates called this state ignorance, Buddha emptiness, Confucius virtue, Jesus faith, Muhammad submission and Baha'u'llah poverty.
For centuries these great individuals of both the East and West have called us to this higher reality. Below we will briefly explore each of these individual's conceptions of the highest state of being and knowing.
Socratic Ignorance
Socrates lived twenty-four centuries ago in the Greek city of Athens. He was not a prophet, nor did he make such a claim, but he felt he had a divine mission to question unrelentingly in search for knowledge of the true and good.
In his dialogues with his fellow Athenians, Socrates forced them to re-examine knowledge that they took for granted. Socrates believed one must be aware of his own ignorance before he can learn something new. In the Meno (Plato, 1892), Socrates shows how insight grows from perplexity and the state of recognizing one's own ignorance, as he questions a slave on a mathematical question.
Socrates himself claimed to be ignorant. In the Apology (Plato, 1947), Socrates explained how he set out to find someone wiser than he, because he was perplexed by the oracle of Delphi's statement that he was the wisest person. In his dialectical encounters with the supposedly wise men of his day--the politicians, the poets and the artisians, he found them not wise at all, but blinded by their own false knowledge. Because of their pride, fear, and attachmnent to their own knowledge, they put barriers between themselves and truth. Because Socrates was aware of and acknowledged his ignorance, he was wiser than the others. He said:
And I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name by way of illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing. (Plato, 1947, p. 190)
In the Republic (Plato, 1960), Socrates expresses this same idea in the allegory of the cave. Chained so that all they could ever see was shadows of images on the cave wall, the inhabitants of the cave believed these shadows to be reality. Socrates then describes what the ascent from the
cave would be like and compares that ascent with the process of moving from illusion to reality. As one ascends from the cave, he must give up his former limited knowledge for a more accurate and complete view of the world until he is brought into the full light. It is only when the inhabitants of the cave recognize their own erroneous view of reality that they can learn the fuller, more real truth.
Socrates felt that one must use more than reason in coming to knowledge. He tells of a voice that spoke to him and gave him guidance which he would obey without understanding. Throughout his life this voice had spoken to him to guide him where his reason could not. For Socrates, self-knowledge is the knowledge of God, and man can only approach the divine through leaving behind earthly passions and acknowledging his own ignorance. These themes are recounted several times in the writings of Socrates' thoughts (Guthrie, 1969).
Socrates influence has endured throughout the centuries and can be found in many of great works of the West.
Buddhist Emptiness
Gautama the Buddha, or the enlightened one, lived near the Himalayas about 500 B.C. Buddha was raised in wealth and luxury, but left this behind in his search for truth. He practiced ascetic self-denial, but later adopted the middle way between self-mortification and worldly ambition as the path of salvation. Buddhism has probably had more adherents than any other religion or philosophy in history.
Koller (1985) describes the central ideas of Buddhism this way:
The main philosophical implications of the ethical-religious teachings of Buddism are contained in the doctrines of no-self (anatta) and impermanence (anicca). Both of these doctrines in turn are underwritten by the principle of dependent origination (paticca samuppada), according to which everything that exists is constantly changing and depends on everything else. The chief difference between the doctrines of anatta and anicca is that the former refers to the non-substantiality of the self, whereas the latter refers to the non-substantiality of things in the world. (p. 155)
Buddha's Four Noble Truths summarize his teachings: life involves suffering, the cause of suffering is desire, elimination of desire leads to a cessation of suffering, and the elimination of desire is the result of following the Noble Eightfold Path. This Path consists of right mode of
seeing things, right thought, right speech, right action, right way of living, right effort, right mindedness and right meditation (Gard, 1961).
In other words, suffering is caused by not understanding reality and by a pre-occupation with worldly and selfish desires. If we can rise above our ignorant cravings and our selfish desires, we can find oneness, happiness and peace.
The final stage in the Noble Eightfold Path, right meditation, has been characterized as emptying oneself so that our sensual cravings and vain imaginings can be squarely faced and dealt with. Only when we have reached this state of right meditation or emptiness of self and limited worldly learnings can we achieve nirvana. Nirvana is also called sunyata or emptiness. This condition is far beyond the relaxation or meditative states achieved through simple physical and mental techniques. It leads to a state of awakening or enlightenment.
D. T. Suzuki, recognized as the foremost interpreter of Zen Buddhism in the West, states:
According to Buddhist scholars, this phenomenal world is an "aggregate" existence made up of conditions, and not a self-existing reality (Atman). When the mind is said to have attained "dissolution", it means that the mind has entered into a state of "absolute emptiness" (sunyata), that it is completely free from all conditionalities, that is "Transcendence". In other words, the mind gains its ultimate reality, being now above birth and death, self and not-self, good and evil. (1972, p.42)
Scott (1890), in comparing Buddhism to Chritainity, says:
In both religions, taken at their highest,, the goal of aspiration was not extinction of sorrow, but extinction of self-love: in Buddhism the quenching of trishna, or upadana, "thirst", in Christainity the quenching of __________, "lust", "inordinate desire." In both religions the goal meant a finality, a state in which there was an end of death; and in both, moreover, it meant a change which no language could define, and to which no standard could apply. (p. 215)
Not only did Buddha teach these concepts, but his life was a realization of them. His system of knowledge did not rely on sense perception, logical operations or empirical proofs, but on the transformations of consciousness and the stages of meditation. It requires a new way of thinking for
the modern western mind. Buddha's concepts of emptiness-- freedom from self and the world, results in a tolerance for others that allows the veils of ignorance and illusion to be removed.
Confucian Virtue
Confucius lived about 2500 years ago in China. He believed that righteousness, propriety and filial piety were fundamental virtues of humanity. Confucius did not consider himself a prophet, a religious leader, or even a sage, the highest of the four types of men in his philosophy. He is considered by many to be the first person to devote his life to teaching. He was interested in improving the human condition in this world and formulated many principles upon which science is based. His statement "when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it. This is knowledge." (Confucius, 1963, p. 43), might be considered one of the first formulations of scientific thinking.
For Confucius, the most perfect man or the superior man (chun-tzu) was the man of jen. Jen makes human beings uniquely human and is the ultimate principle of human action. The Confucian Way (Tao) is essentially the way of jen. Jen has been translated many ways, i.e. virtue, humanity, benevolence, love, human-goodness and human-kindness. Jen can be expressed in terms of conscientiousness (chung) and altruism (shu), as in Confucius' statement "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you" (Koller, 1985, p. 266). This is the "one thread" (i-kuan), the golden rule or golden mean of Confucian teachings (Chan, 1963).
Confucius taught that we should be aware of our own limits. From The Analects, the most reliable source of Confucius' teachings, the point that Confucius "had no arbitrariness of opinion, no dogmatism, no obstinacy, and no egotism" is brought out (Chan, 1963, p.35). He did not think he had complete knowledge, nor did he think that such knowledge was possible. He felt one of the errors of men was their failure to see their own faults and ignorance. On questions about metaphysics, Confucius was unwilling to give answers that limited ultimate reality. He thought it was impossible to speak objectively about things that were not objects (Jaspers, 1962).
Confuciansism has been a dominate force in China for over two thousand years and can be said to have truly molded Chinese civilization and philosophy (Chan, 1963).
Christain Faith
Jesus, the Christ, lived two thousand years ago in the middle east. Christianity was born from his life and
teachings and has played a major role in the development of modern civilization.
Christ taught that this physical world is nothing when compared to the spiritual world. Jesus exemplified his teachings by sacrificing worldy desires for his spiritual mission. The path to salvation involved resisting the temptations of this limited world and advancing toward the kingdom of heaven. He spoke much of love. Love free of self and the world is the ultimate condition.
Jesus stressed belief and faith over reason and tradition. One's abilities are only limited by one's belief and faith. This faith leads to heaven and a freeing of worldly cares. It implies a trust and contentment with the will of God. Jaspers says this about Christain faith:
The end of the message is: Believe in the good tidings. Have faith (pistis). Faith is indispensable for admission to the kingdom of heaven. It is the prerequisite of salvation and is itself salvation.... Faith is a word for the Biblical relation to God. It means absolute trust in the will of God. "Thy will be done" is and expression of this trust. Faith is certainty, concerning God, concerning man's bond to Him, concerning God's love which is the foundation of prayer. Faith is the salt that seasons man's whole being. But it cannot be taken for granted, induced by design. It does not understand itself. (1957/1962a, pp. 69, 70-71)
Christ taught that knowledge was achieved through faith and that this faith could not be completely understood. He spoke of people hearing and seeing, yet not understanding. He praised the poor and lowly because they were receptive to the truth. The learned and wealthy rejected his teachings because they were blinded by their own knowledge and attachments.
Jesus taught the importance of poverty. This poverty included material poverty, but was concerned more with a spiritual reality. He spoke of how hard it was for a wealthy person to enter heaven and extolled the station of the poor and meek. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.... Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:3, 5). The poor and meek have nothing and therefore can be filled with the new truth and reality as expressed by Paul in II Corinthians 6:10: "As poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." In the same sense, Jesus said "Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:4).
Christ was himself an example of all he taught. Even though he lived in the world, he was detached and above the world. Ego and worldly desires were eliminated from his heart and mind and the limited knowledge and the conditions of his environment could not restrict him. He was the essence of faith and poverty.
Islamic Submission
Muhammad was born about 570 A.D. in Arabia and is the founder of Islam. Islam means submission to the will of God and this is the central tenet of Muhammad's teachings. Submission to the will of God requires detachment from our own will and limited knowledge. God transcends all things, and only by submitting our knowledge and will to His can we discover truth and freedom. Muslims, ones who submit, are to be God-centered and to believe everything comes from God and returns to God (Brandon, 1970).
The most well-known of the Muslim mystics are the Sufis. Farid Ud-Din Attar, one of the greatest of the Sufi poets, wrote about the stages of the journey of the soul in the Mantiqu't-Tayr or The Conference of the Birds (1971). These stages are spoken of as valleys that the birds must traverse in the quest of their king. The first is the valley of search or quest, where tests are encountered and desires renounced. The valley of love follows in which the seeker is consumed by his longing for the beloved. In the valley of knowledge one receives direct intuitive truth and in the valley of detachment the traveller is freed from passions and dependence. The fifth valley, called the valley of unification, is characterized by seeing things that seemed different as one. In the valley of bewilderment or astonishment, one sees knowledge in the new light of love. The final valley is called annihilation or death and represents the highest state of understanding, truth, and reality and the highest level of Islamic submission to the will of God.
Muhammad revolutionalized life in Arabia and the East and has had tremendous influence on western thought and civilization. He brought new ways of thinking and behaving and was instrumental in eliminating many of the harmful ideas and practices current during that time.
Baha'i Poverty
Baha'u'llah lived during the nineteenth century in Persia. The central idea of his teachings is unity. This includes unity of God, religion and humankind.
In the Seven Valleys, Baha'u'llah's describes the highest state of being and knowing.
This station is the dying from self and the living in God, the being poor in self and rich in the Desired One. Poverty as here referred to signifieth being poor in the things of the created world, rich in the things of God's world. (p. 36)
Elsewhwere, Baha'u'llah gives both the ultimate purpose of humanity and the necessary attitude for achieving that purpose.
I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth. (Baha'u'llah, Bab, & Abdu'l-Baha, 1978, p.117)
The essence of understanding is to testify to one's poverty, and submit to the will of the Lord, the Sovereign, the Gracious, the All-Powerful.... The essence of all that We have revealed for thee is Justice, is for man to free himself from idle fancies and imitation, discern with the eye of oneness His glorious handiwork, and look into all things with a searching eye. (Baha'u'llah & Abdu'l-Baha, 1971, pp. 141, 142)
Abdu'l-Baha, in presenting the Baha'i view of the two natures in man, describes the condition of being a saint:
Saints are men who have freed themselves from the world of matter and who have overcome sin. They live in the world but are not of it, their thoughts being continually in the world of the spirit. (Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha, 1970, p. 264)
The Baha'i view of the highest stae of being and knowing could be describe as the being poor or rid of egotism and worldy attachments.
Baha'u'llah has not yet had the historical influence of any of the other individuals considered thus far, but the quality of his life and teachings make him a likely candidate for being considered the paradigmatic individual of our time.
Paradigmatic Conceptualizations
Each of the paradigmatic individual's conceptualization of the highest state of being and knowing refers to a condition of being free of self and worldly attachments. The greatest philosophical and religious leaders of all time, Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad, have one and all taught that the state of selflessness and
detachment is the highest level of knowledge and reality. Baha'u'llah also taught this same truth.
Even though each expressed the ultimate state of learning and development differently, the theme was the same. We must rid ourselves of self and worldly attachments, this must be regarded as the goal of a complete education. Socratic ignorance, Buddhist right meditation and emptiness, Confucian virtue and awareness of limits, Christian faith and poverty, Islamic submission and annihilation and Baha'i poverty and nothingness are all expressions of the same truth. This truth has been echoed in different forms by the many scholars and philosophers who have illumined our thoughts throughout history.
Each of these individuals required and caused a transformation in the awareness of mankind. Socrates called for a transformation in thinking; Buddha for meditative living, Confucius for education beyond mere learning, Jesus for devotion to God that rules out worldly attachments, Muhammad for submission to God's will and Baha'u'llah for complete selflessness. They all went beyond mere knowledge to transform the souls of mean. All acknowledged their own limitations and lived a life that exemplified their teachings. They serve as lights to guide us. Each of them taught with great humility, and, as a result, their teachings had a great effect.
The knowledge of each of these great men was discounted by the learned of their times. Those in authority and the supposed leaders of thought preferred to cling to their own erroneous ideas, and were thus cut off from the higher knowledge offered by these great men. Through a blind acceptance of the knowledge of their day and the traditions of the past, the people were held back from the truth. This unthinking belief caused the people to reject the truth brought by Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Muhammad and Baha'u'llah and to rise up against them.
Their conceptions go beyond our limited conceptions of education to include the the ultimate purpose and reality of man. Most education of today can be characterized as material education--that which relates primarily to the self and the world. The education spoken of by Baha'u'llah and the prophets and philosophers of old, transcends this narrow view of man and reguires an awareness of the limitations of our worldly knowledge.
Present-day Conceptions
How does the conception of the highest state of being and knowing by these great individuals compare to present-day conceptions? We can begin to answer this question by looking at the leading theories of human development. We can then compare their conceptualizations
of human development to each other and to the state of selflessness and detachment called for by the paradigmatic individuals above. There are several development models of human existence. Among the most influential are those of Piaget, Kolberg and Maslow. A recent model that goes beyond these theorists' conceptualizations has been proposed by Wilber (1983). Figure 1 compares these models to each other.
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Wilber Maslow Kohlberg Piaget
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Causal
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Subtle Self-transcen-
dance
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Psychic Self-actuali- Universal
zation ethical
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Rational Self-esteem Social Formal
contract operational ____________________________________________________________
Mythic Belongingness Conventional Concrete
operational
____________________________________________________________
Magical Saftey needs Instrumental Pre-operational
____________________________________________________________
Archaic Physiological Punishment Sensori-motor
____________________________________________________________
Figure 1 Comparison of present-day development models. Note. Adapted from Curriculum Perspectives and Practices (p. 130) by J. P. Miller and W. Seller, 1985, New York: Longman. Copyright 1985 by Longman Inc.
These models give the hiearchical stages of human development according to their own orientations. Only Maslow and Wilber include stages that could be considered analogous to the state of selflessness and detachment talked about by the paradigmatic individuals.
The lowest level of each of these conceptualizations of human development focuses on the physical needs and reality of humankind.
At the next level, the individual begins to think instead of just reacting to physical needs.
At the third level persons can think concretely and are oriented toward conformity.
The fourth level is characterized by formal, rational thinking and is the highest stage in Piaget's cognitive model.
The psychic level involves higher order synthesizing ability and is representative of Kolberg's highest state of moral development.
The subtle or self-transcendance level approaches the type of thinking that characterized the paradigmatic individuals: that of intution and spiritual insight. Maslow describe this stage in his hierarchy of needs as:
the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than as means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species to nature and to the cosmos. (1971, p. 279)
The highest level of development within these four models is conceptualized by Wilber (1983) as transcending personal identity and becoming one with all. He makes a distinction between the subtle saints and the causal sages.
The Mosaic revelation on Mt. Sinai has all the standard features of a subtle level apprehension: a numinous Other that is Light, Fire, Insight, and Sound (shabd). Nowhere, however, does Moses claim to be one with or identical with that Being.... Christ, on the other hand, does claim that "I and the Father are one," a perfect Atmic or causal level apprehension. (pp. 31-32)
It can be seen that these conceptualization of human development are comparable to the conceptualization of the paradigmatic individuals, and actually provide the hierachical stages to the highest state of being and knowing.
Conclusion
The concept of detachment from self and the world as the ultimate human state has been proposed by the paradigmatic individuals and is supported some of present-day conceptualizations of human development. As such, it is a unifying concept for the peoples of the world and a unifying goal for education. Selflessness and detachment are the ultimate goals for education: the highest states of being and knowing
The form of education should match the level of the learner's development. As a consequence, there is not much use for models of education at the level of the highest state of being and knowing, as formal education at this level is not practical. It is obvious that a child at the lowest level of development would have difficulty
benefitting from an educational program designed for the higher levels. Just as what is right morally differs from stage to stage, so is what is right educationally.
These conceptualizations of reality put forth by the paradigmatic individuals and the spiritual and intellectual leaders in both the East and West are the guiding lights of wholistic education.
REFERENCES
Attar, F. (1971). The conference of the birds. (C. Nott Trans.) Boston: Shambhala.
Baha'u'llah (1978). The seven valleys and the four valleys. Wilmette, IL: Baha'i Publishing.
Baha'u'llah & Abdu'l-Baha (1970). The Baha'i revelation. London: Baha'i Publishing.
Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha (1971). Baha'i world faith. Wilmette, IL: Baha'i Publishing.
Baha'u'llah, Bab, and Abdul-Baha (1978). Baha'i prayers. Wilmette, IL: Baha'i Publishing.
Brandon, S. (Ed.). (1970). Dictionary of comparative religion. New York: Scribner's.
Chan, W. (1963). A source book in Chinese philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Confucius. (1963). The wisdom of Confucius. Mount Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press.
Gard, R. (1961). Buddhism. New York: George Braziller.
Guthrie, W. (1969). A history of Greek philosophy. London: Cambridge University Press.
Jaspers, K. (1962). The great philosophers. (R. Manheim Trans.) New York: Harcourt Brace. (Original work published 1957).
Jaspers, K. (1962a). Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus. (R. Manheim Trans.) New York: Harcourt Brace. (Original work published 1957).
Koller J. (1985). Oriental philosophies. New York: Scribners.
Maslow, A. (1971). The farther reaches of human nature. New York: Viking.
Plato. (1892). Meno. In B. Jowett (Trans.) The dialogues of Plato, (pp. 349-383). New York: Random House.
Plato. (1947). Apology. In S. Commins & R. Lincott (Eds.), The world's great thinkers: Man and man: The social philosophers (pp. 115-212). New York: Random House.
Plato. (1960). The allegory of the cave. In C. Joad (Ed.) Classics in philosophy and ethics, (pp. 27-37). Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press.
Schilipp, P. (Ed.) (1957). The philosophy of Karl Jaspers. New York; Tudor.
Suzuki, D. T. (1972). Enlightenment. Walter H. Capps, (Ed.), Ways of understanding religion. (pp.33-44). New York: Macmillian.
Waks, L. (1986, April). Emptiness: A trancultural goal of wholistic education. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Fransisco, CA.
Wilber, K. (1983). A sociable God. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
American Educational Research Association
New Orleans, April 4-9, 1988
Abstract
This paper identifies what are considered the most influential individuals in human history: Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, and then identifies a more recent individual of similar historicity and qualities--Baha'u'llah. Each of their individual conceptions of the highest state of being and knowing is briefly presented and then commonalities of their conceptualizations discussed. Each proposes a state that might be decribed as selflessness and detachment from the world. The present-day conceptions of human development by Piaget, Maslow, Kohlberg and Wilber are presented and compared to the highest state of being and knowing proposed by the great individuals earlier in the paper.
THE HIGHEST STATE OF BEING AND KNOWING
by
Rodney H. Clarken
Some years ago in a graduate research course I was taking, I had an experience that had a great effect upon me. The professor emeritus teaching the course did something that both shocked and embarassed me: he started class with a prayer. I was shocked that a professor would do such a thing and embarassed for him because he was obviously out of touch with modern-day university life.
In 1986, while attending the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in San Fransisco, I had a similar experience. I attended a session in which the paper, Emptiness: A Transcultural Goal of Wholistic Education (Waks, 1986) was presented. I was surprised to hear such a paper at AERA and I was embarassed for the presenter, as he obviously seemed out of touch with what was going on in the rest of the sessions, but like my research professor, did not seem to know it or be concerned about it.
After each of these experiences I pondered over why I felt the way I did, because I actually believed in what they were doing and saying. Each of these experiences led me to further explore myself, my convictions and my way of doing things. This paper is one of the results of that exploration.
In the paper, Emptiness: A Transcultural Goal of Wholistic Education (Waks, 1986) it was proposed that emptiness is a common idea to the teachings of Socrates, Christ and Buddha, and as such represented a common experience that could serve as a transcultural goal of wholistic education.
This paper identifies what are considered the most influential individuals in human history: Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, and then identifies a more recent individual of similar historicity and qualities--Baha'u'llah. These people are called paradigmatic individuals. Each of their individual conceptions of the highest state of being and knowing is briefly presented and then the commonalities of their conceptualizations discussed. Each proposes a state that might be decribed as selflessness and detachment from the world. The present-day conceptions of human development by Piaget, Maslow, Kohlberg and Wilber are presented and compared to the highest state of being and knowing proposed by the paradigmatic individuals.
Paradigmatic Individuals
In his first volume of works entitled The Great Philosophers, Karl Jaspers (1957/1962), "one of the most seminal minds in the philosophy of the twentieth century" (Schilipp, 1957, p. xi), identifies what he feels are the most influential people in the history of the world. From all the people who have ever lived, he beleives that four stand out from all of the others in the effect their lives have had on the course of human thought and history. He calls these four "paradigmatic individuals". A paradigm is a pattern or example and these four "paradigmatic individuals" serve as examples or paradigms to humanity. Their teachings are models that have had the greatest influence on the history of man. They are Socrates, Buddha, Confucius and Jesus. Jaspers says this about them:
"The four paradigmatic individuals have exerted a historical influence of incomparable scope and depth. Other men of great stature may have been equally important for smaller groups. But when it comes to broad, enduring influence over many hundreds of years, they are so far above all others that they must be singled out if we are to form a clear view of the world's history. (p. 13)
These men set norms by their attitudes, actions, experience of being, and their imperatives. In delving to the heart of their own problems, subsequent philopsoghers have looked to these thinkers. Each in his sphere, they have all exerted an enormous influence on later philosophy. (pp. 99-100)
Jaspers feels that only one other person could be compared to these four individuals based on his historical influence. That person is Muhammad. The impact and quality of Muhammad's life, evidenced by the effects he has had on present-day thought and civilization, qualifies him to be regarded as one of greatest individuals of history. As such, he will be considered along with Jasper's paradigmatic individuals.
Baha'u'llah, who lived during the last century, has not yet had the possibility to have the historical influence of any of the above indivdiduals, but based upon his life and teachings, he could be considered the paradigmatic individual of current times. For this reason, he will also be considered along with the other paradigmatic individuals.
These individuals represent the greatest philosophical and religious ideologies of both the East and the West. They all suffered as a result of their ideas, and two were
put to death because of their teachings. Each proposed that the highest state of being and knowing is the overcoming of self and worldy attachments and limitations. Socrates called this state ignorance, Buddha emptiness, Confucius virtue, Jesus faith, Muhammad submission and Baha'u'llah poverty.
For centuries these great individuals of both the East and West have called us to this higher reality. Below we will briefly explore each of these individual's conceptions of the highest state of being and knowing.
Socratic Ignorance
Socrates lived twenty-four centuries ago in the Greek city of Athens. He was not a prophet, nor did he make such a claim, but he felt he had a divine mission to question unrelentingly in search for knowledge of the true and good.
In his dialogues with his fellow Athenians, Socrates forced them to re-examine knowledge that they took for granted. Socrates believed one must be aware of his own ignorance before he can learn something new. In the Meno (Plato, 1892), Socrates shows how insight grows from perplexity and the state of recognizing one's own ignorance, as he questions a slave on a mathematical question.
Socrates himself claimed to be ignorant. In the Apology (Plato, 1947), Socrates explained how he set out to find someone wiser than he, because he was perplexed by the oracle of Delphi's statement that he was the wisest person. In his dialectical encounters with the supposedly wise men of his day--the politicians, the poets and the artisians, he found them not wise at all, but blinded by their own false knowledge. Because of their pride, fear, and attachmnent to their own knowledge, they put barriers between themselves and truth. Because Socrates was aware of and acknowledged his ignorance, he was wiser than the others. He said:
And I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name by way of illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing. (Plato, 1947, p. 190)
In the Republic (Plato, 1960), Socrates expresses this same idea in the allegory of the cave. Chained so that all they could ever see was shadows of images on the cave wall, the inhabitants of the cave believed these shadows to be reality. Socrates then describes what the ascent from the
cave would be like and compares that ascent with the process of moving from illusion to reality. As one ascends from the cave, he must give up his former limited knowledge for a more accurate and complete view of the world until he is brought into the full light. It is only when the inhabitants of the cave recognize their own erroneous view of reality that they can learn the fuller, more real truth.
Socrates felt that one must use more than reason in coming to knowledge. He tells of a voice that spoke to him and gave him guidance which he would obey without understanding. Throughout his life this voice had spoken to him to guide him where his reason could not. For Socrates, self-knowledge is the knowledge of God, and man can only approach the divine through leaving behind earthly passions and acknowledging his own ignorance. These themes are recounted several times in the writings of Socrates' thoughts (Guthrie, 1969).
Socrates influence has endured throughout the centuries and can be found in many of great works of the West.
Buddhist Emptiness
Gautama the Buddha, or the enlightened one, lived near the Himalayas about 500 B.C. Buddha was raised in wealth and luxury, but left this behind in his search for truth. He practiced ascetic self-denial, but later adopted the middle way between self-mortification and worldly ambition as the path of salvation. Buddhism has probably had more adherents than any other religion or philosophy in history.
Koller (1985) describes the central ideas of Buddhism this way:
The main philosophical implications of the ethical-religious teachings of Buddism are contained in the doctrines of no-self (anatta) and impermanence (anicca). Both of these doctrines in turn are underwritten by the principle of dependent origination (paticca samuppada), according to which everything that exists is constantly changing and depends on everything else. The chief difference between the doctrines of anatta and anicca is that the former refers to the non-substantiality of the self, whereas the latter refers to the non-substantiality of things in the world. (p. 155)
Buddha's Four Noble Truths summarize his teachings: life involves suffering, the cause of suffering is desire, elimination of desire leads to a cessation of suffering, and the elimination of desire is the result of following the Noble Eightfold Path. This Path consists of right mode of
seeing things, right thought, right speech, right action, right way of living, right effort, right mindedness and right meditation (Gard, 1961).
In other words, suffering is caused by not understanding reality and by a pre-occupation with worldly and selfish desires. If we can rise above our ignorant cravings and our selfish desires, we can find oneness, happiness and peace.
The final stage in the Noble Eightfold Path, right meditation, has been characterized as emptying oneself so that our sensual cravings and vain imaginings can be squarely faced and dealt with. Only when we have reached this state of right meditation or emptiness of self and limited worldly learnings can we achieve nirvana. Nirvana is also called sunyata or emptiness. This condition is far beyond the relaxation or meditative states achieved through simple physical and mental techniques. It leads to a state of awakening or enlightenment.
D. T. Suzuki, recognized as the foremost interpreter of Zen Buddhism in the West, states:
According to Buddhist scholars, this phenomenal world is an "aggregate" existence made up of conditions, and not a self-existing reality (Atman). When the mind is said to have attained "dissolution", it means that the mind has entered into a state of "absolute emptiness" (sunyata), that it is completely free from all conditionalities, that is "Transcendence". In other words, the mind gains its ultimate reality, being now above birth and death, self and not-self, good and evil. (1972, p.42)
Scott (1890), in comparing Buddhism to Chritainity, says:
In both religions, taken at their highest,, the goal of aspiration was not extinction of sorrow, but extinction of self-love: in Buddhism the quenching of trishna, or upadana, "thirst", in Christainity the quenching of __________, "lust", "inordinate desire." In both religions the goal meant a finality, a state in which there was an end of death; and in both, moreover, it meant a change which no language could define, and to which no standard could apply. (p. 215)
Not only did Buddha teach these concepts, but his life was a realization of them. His system of knowledge did not rely on sense perception, logical operations or empirical proofs, but on the transformations of consciousness and the stages of meditation. It requires a new way of thinking for
the modern western mind. Buddha's concepts of emptiness-- freedom from self and the world, results in a tolerance for others that allows the veils of ignorance and illusion to be removed.
Confucian Virtue
Confucius lived about 2500 years ago in China. He believed that righteousness, propriety and filial piety were fundamental virtues of humanity. Confucius did not consider himself a prophet, a religious leader, or even a sage, the highest of the four types of men in his philosophy. He is considered by many to be the first person to devote his life to teaching. He was interested in improving the human condition in this world and formulated many principles upon which science is based. His statement "when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it. This is knowledge." (Confucius, 1963, p. 43), might be considered one of the first formulations of scientific thinking.
For Confucius, the most perfect man or the superior man (chun-tzu) was the man of jen. Jen makes human beings uniquely human and is the ultimate principle of human action. The Confucian Way (Tao) is essentially the way of jen. Jen has been translated many ways, i.e. virtue, humanity, benevolence, love, human-goodness and human-kindness. Jen can be expressed in terms of conscientiousness (chung) and altruism (shu), as in Confucius' statement "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you" (Koller, 1985, p. 266). This is the "one thread" (i-kuan), the golden rule or golden mean of Confucian teachings (Chan, 1963).
Confucius taught that we should be aware of our own limits. From The Analects, the most reliable source of Confucius' teachings, the point that Confucius "had no arbitrariness of opinion, no dogmatism, no obstinacy, and no egotism" is brought out (Chan, 1963, p.35). He did not think he had complete knowledge, nor did he think that such knowledge was possible. He felt one of the errors of men was their failure to see their own faults and ignorance. On questions about metaphysics, Confucius was unwilling to give answers that limited ultimate reality. He thought it was impossible to speak objectively about things that were not objects (Jaspers, 1962).
Confuciansism has been a dominate force in China for over two thousand years and can be said to have truly molded Chinese civilization and philosophy (Chan, 1963).
Christain Faith
Jesus, the Christ, lived two thousand years ago in the middle east. Christianity was born from his life and
teachings and has played a major role in the development of modern civilization.
Christ taught that this physical world is nothing when compared to the spiritual world. Jesus exemplified his teachings by sacrificing worldy desires for his spiritual mission. The path to salvation involved resisting the temptations of this limited world and advancing toward the kingdom of heaven. He spoke much of love. Love free of self and the world is the ultimate condition.
Jesus stressed belief and faith over reason and tradition. One's abilities are only limited by one's belief and faith. This faith leads to heaven and a freeing of worldly cares. It implies a trust and contentment with the will of God. Jaspers says this about Christain faith:
The end of the message is: Believe in the good tidings. Have faith (pistis). Faith is indispensable for admission to the kingdom of heaven. It is the prerequisite of salvation and is itself salvation.... Faith is a word for the Biblical relation to God. It means absolute trust in the will of God. "Thy will be done" is and expression of this trust. Faith is certainty, concerning God, concerning man's bond to Him, concerning God's love which is the foundation of prayer. Faith is the salt that seasons man's whole being. But it cannot be taken for granted, induced by design. It does not understand itself. (1957/1962a, pp. 69, 70-71)
Christ taught that knowledge was achieved through faith and that this faith could not be completely understood. He spoke of people hearing and seeing, yet not understanding. He praised the poor and lowly because they were receptive to the truth. The learned and wealthy rejected his teachings because they were blinded by their own knowledge and attachments.
Jesus taught the importance of poverty. This poverty included material poverty, but was concerned more with a spiritual reality. He spoke of how hard it was for a wealthy person to enter heaven and extolled the station of the poor and meek. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.... Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:3, 5). The poor and meek have nothing and therefore can be filled with the new truth and reality as expressed by Paul in II Corinthians 6:10: "As poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." In the same sense, Jesus said "Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:4).
Christ was himself an example of all he taught. Even though he lived in the world, he was detached and above the world. Ego and worldly desires were eliminated from his heart and mind and the limited knowledge and the conditions of his environment could not restrict him. He was the essence of faith and poverty.
Islamic Submission
Muhammad was born about 570 A.D. in Arabia and is the founder of Islam. Islam means submission to the will of God and this is the central tenet of Muhammad's teachings. Submission to the will of God requires detachment from our own will and limited knowledge. God transcends all things, and only by submitting our knowledge and will to His can we discover truth and freedom. Muslims, ones who submit, are to be God-centered and to believe everything comes from God and returns to God (Brandon, 1970).
The most well-known of the Muslim mystics are the Sufis. Farid Ud-Din Attar, one of the greatest of the Sufi poets, wrote about the stages of the journey of the soul in the Mantiqu't-Tayr or The Conference of the Birds (1971). These stages are spoken of as valleys that the birds must traverse in the quest of their king. The first is the valley of search or quest, where tests are encountered and desires renounced. The valley of love follows in which the seeker is consumed by his longing for the beloved. In the valley of knowledge one receives direct intuitive truth and in the valley of detachment the traveller is freed from passions and dependence. The fifth valley, called the valley of unification, is characterized by seeing things that seemed different as one. In the valley of bewilderment or astonishment, one sees knowledge in the new light of love. The final valley is called annihilation or death and represents the highest state of understanding, truth, and reality and the highest level of Islamic submission to the will of God.
Muhammad revolutionalized life in Arabia and the East and has had tremendous influence on western thought and civilization. He brought new ways of thinking and behaving and was instrumental in eliminating many of the harmful ideas and practices current during that time.
Baha'i Poverty
Baha'u'llah lived during the nineteenth century in Persia. The central idea of his teachings is unity. This includes unity of God, religion and humankind.
In the Seven Valleys, Baha'u'llah's describes the highest state of being and knowing.
This station is the dying from self and the living in God, the being poor in self and rich in the Desired One. Poverty as here referred to signifieth being poor in the things of the created world, rich in the things of God's world. (p. 36)
Elsewhwere, Baha'u'llah gives both the ultimate purpose of humanity and the necessary attitude for achieving that purpose.
I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth. (Baha'u'llah, Bab, & Abdu'l-Baha, 1978, p.117)
The essence of understanding is to testify to one's poverty, and submit to the will of the Lord, the Sovereign, the Gracious, the All-Powerful.... The essence of all that We have revealed for thee is Justice, is for man to free himself from idle fancies and imitation, discern with the eye of oneness His glorious handiwork, and look into all things with a searching eye. (Baha'u'llah & Abdu'l-Baha, 1971, pp. 141, 142)
Abdu'l-Baha, in presenting the Baha'i view of the two natures in man, describes the condition of being a saint:
Saints are men who have freed themselves from the world of matter and who have overcome sin. They live in the world but are not of it, their thoughts being continually in the world of the spirit. (Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha, 1970, p. 264)
The Baha'i view of the highest stae of being and knowing could be describe as the being poor or rid of egotism and worldy attachments.
Baha'u'llah has not yet had the historical influence of any of the other individuals considered thus far, but the quality of his life and teachings make him a likely candidate for being considered the paradigmatic individual of our time.
Paradigmatic Conceptualizations
Each of the paradigmatic individual's conceptualization of the highest state of being and knowing refers to a condition of being free of self and worldly attachments. The greatest philosophical and religious leaders of all time, Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad, have one and all taught that the state of selflessness and
detachment is the highest level of knowledge and reality. Baha'u'llah also taught this same truth.
Even though each expressed the ultimate state of learning and development differently, the theme was the same. We must rid ourselves of self and worldly attachments, this must be regarded as the goal of a complete education. Socratic ignorance, Buddhist right meditation and emptiness, Confucian virtue and awareness of limits, Christian faith and poverty, Islamic submission and annihilation and Baha'i poverty and nothingness are all expressions of the same truth. This truth has been echoed in different forms by the many scholars and philosophers who have illumined our thoughts throughout history.
Each of these individuals required and caused a transformation in the awareness of mankind. Socrates called for a transformation in thinking; Buddha for meditative living, Confucius for education beyond mere learning, Jesus for devotion to God that rules out worldly attachments, Muhammad for submission to God's will and Baha'u'llah for complete selflessness. They all went beyond mere knowledge to transform the souls of mean. All acknowledged their own limitations and lived a life that exemplified their teachings. They serve as lights to guide us. Each of them taught with great humility, and, as a result, their teachings had a great effect.
The knowledge of each of these great men was discounted by the learned of their times. Those in authority and the supposed leaders of thought preferred to cling to their own erroneous ideas, and were thus cut off from the higher knowledge offered by these great men. Through a blind acceptance of the knowledge of their day and the traditions of the past, the people were held back from the truth. This unthinking belief caused the people to reject the truth brought by Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Muhammad and Baha'u'llah and to rise up against them.
Their conceptions go beyond our limited conceptions of education to include the the ultimate purpose and reality of man. Most education of today can be characterized as material education--that which relates primarily to the self and the world. The education spoken of by Baha'u'llah and the prophets and philosophers of old, transcends this narrow view of man and reguires an awareness of the limitations of our worldly knowledge.
Present-day Conceptions
How does the conception of the highest state of being and knowing by these great individuals compare to present-day conceptions? We can begin to answer this question by looking at the leading theories of human development. We can then compare their conceptualizations
of human development to each other and to the state of selflessness and detachment called for by the paradigmatic individuals above. There are several development models of human existence. Among the most influential are those of Piaget, Kolberg and Maslow. A recent model that goes beyond these theorists' conceptualizations has been proposed by Wilber (1983). Figure 1 compares these models to each other.
____________________________________________________________
Wilber Maslow Kohlberg Piaget
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Causal
____________________________________________________________
Subtle Self-transcen-
dance
____________________________________________________________
Psychic Self-actuali- Universal
zation ethical
____________________________________________________________
Rational Self-esteem Social Formal
contract operational ____________________________________________________________
Mythic Belongingness Conventional Concrete
operational
____________________________________________________________
Magical Saftey needs Instrumental Pre-operational
____________________________________________________________
Archaic Physiological Punishment Sensori-motor
____________________________________________________________
Figure 1 Comparison of present-day development models. Note. Adapted from Curriculum Perspectives and Practices (p. 130) by J. P. Miller and W. Seller, 1985, New York: Longman. Copyright 1985 by Longman Inc.
These models give the hiearchical stages of human development according to their own orientations. Only Maslow and Wilber include stages that could be considered analogous to the state of selflessness and detachment talked about by the paradigmatic individuals.
The lowest level of each of these conceptualizations of human development focuses on the physical needs and reality of humankind.
At the next level, the individual begins to think instead of just reacting to physical needs.
At the third level persons can think concretely and are oriented toward conformity.
The fourth level is characterized by formal, rational thinking and is the highest stage in Piaget's cognitive model.
The psychic level involves higher order synthesizing ability and is representative of Kolberg's highest state of moral development.
The subtle or self-transcendance level approaches the type of thinking that characterized the paradigmatic individuals: that of intution and spiritual insight. Maslow describe this stage in his hierarchy of needs as:
the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than as means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species to nature and to the cosmos. (1971, p. 279)
The highest level of development within these four models is conceptualized by Wilber (1983) as transcending personal identity and becoming one with all. He makes a distinction between the subtle saints and the causal sages.
The Mosaic revelation on Mt. Sinai has all the standard features of a subtle level apprehension: a numinous Other that is Light, Fire, Insight, and Sound (shabd). Nowhere, however, does Moses claim to be one with or identical with that Being.... Christ, on the other hand, does claim that "I and the Father are one," a perfect Atmic or causal level apprehension. (pp. 31-32)
It can be seen that these conceptualization of human development are comparable to the conceptualization of the paradigmatic individuals, and actually provide the hierachical stages to the highest state of being and knowing.
Conclusion
The concept of detachment from self and the world as the ultimate human state has been proposed by the paradigmatic individuals and is supported some of present-day conceptualizations of human development. As such, it is a unifying concept for the peoples of the world and a unifying goal for education. Selflessness and detachment are the ultimate goals for education: the highest states of being and knowing
The form of education should match the level of the learner's development. As a consequence, there is not much use for models of education at the level of the highest state of being and knowing, as formal education at this level is not practical. It is obvious that a child at the lowest level of development would have difficulty
benefitting from an educational program designed for the higher levels. Just as what is right morally differs from stage to stage, so is what is right educationally.
These conceptualizations of reality put forth by the paradigmatic individuals and the spiritual and intellectual leaders in both the East and West are the guiding lights of wholistic education.
REFERENCES
Attar, F. (1971). The conference of the birds. (C. Nott Trans.) Boston: Shambhala.
Baha'u'llah (1978). The seven valleys and the four valleys. Wilmette, IL: Baha'i Publishing.
Baha'u'llah & Abdu'l-Baha (1970). The Baha'i revelation. London: Baha'i Publishing.
Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha (1971). Baha'i world faith. Wilmette, IL: Baha'i Publishing.
Baha'u'llah, Bab, and Abdul-Baha (1978). Baha'i prayers. Wilmette, IL: Baha'i Publishing.
Brandon, S. (Ed.). (1970). Dictionary of comparative religion. New York: Scribner's.
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The Great Afterlife
a debate between Michael Shermer & Deepak Chopra
The following debate between Deepak Chopra and Michael Shermer came about after the widely read and referenced debate the two had last year on the virtues and value of skepticism. Deepak has a new book out on the subject, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof (Harmony, 2006 ISBN 0307345785), and Michael has written extensively about claims of evidence for the afterlife, so the two of them thought it would be stimulating to have a debate on the topic. Michael read Deepak’s book and goes first in the debate, offering his assessment of the “proofs” presented in Deepak’s book, then Deepak responds. Shorter blog-length versions are published on www.HuffingtonPost.com, with the longer versions presented here and on www.intentBlog.com.
photo of Michael Shermer
Hope Springs Eternal:
Science, the Afterlife & the Meaning of Life
by Michael Shermer
I once saw a bumper sticker that read: Militant Agnostic: I Don’t Know and You Don’t Either.
This is my position on the afterlife: I don’t know and you don’t either. If we knew for certain that there is an afterlife, we would not fear death as we do, we would not mourn quite so agonizingly the death of loved ones, and there would be no need to engage in debates on the subject.
Because no one knows for sure what happens after we die, we deal with the topic in diverse ways through religion, literature, poetry, science, and even humor. The perpetually anxious Woody Allen has this workaround: “It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Steven Wright thinks he’s figured out a solution: “I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”
Humor aside, since I am a scientist and claims are made that there is scientific evidence for life after death, let us analyze the data for that doubtful future date, and consider what its possibility may mean for our present state.
21 Grams: The Nature of the Soul
What is it that supposedly survives the death of the physical body? The soul. There are about as many different understandings of the nature of the soul as there are religions and spiritual movements. The general belief is that the soul is a conscious ethereal substance that is the unique essence of a living being that survives its incarnation in flesh.
The ancient Hebrew word for soul is nephesh, or “life” or “vital breath”; the Greek word for soul is psyche, or “mind”; and the Roman Latin word for soul is anima, or “spirit” or “breath.” The soul is the essence that breathes life into flesh, animates us, gives us our vital spirit. Given the lack of knowledge about the natural world at the time these concepts were first formed, it is not surprising these ancient peoples reached for such ephemeral metaphors as mind, breath, and spirit. One moment a little dog is barking, prancing, and wagging its tail, and in the next moment it is a lump of inert flesh. What happened in that moment?
In 1907 a Massachusetts physician named Duncan MacDougall tried to find out by weighing six dying patients before and after their death. He reported in the medical journal American Medicine that there was a 21-gram difference. Even though his measurements were crude and varying, and no one has been able to replicate his findings, it has nonetheless grown to urban legendary status as the weight of the soul. The implication is that the soul is a thing that can be weighed. Is it?
In science we define our terms with semantic precision. I define the “soul” as the unique pattern of information that represents the essence of a person. By this definition, unless there is some medium to retain the pattern of our personal information after we die, our soul dies with us. Our bodies are made of proteins, coded by our DNA, so with the disintegration of DNA our protein patterns are lost forever. Our memories and personality are stored in the patterns of neurons firing in our brains, so when those neurons die it spells the death of our memories and personality, similar to the ravages of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, only final.
Because the brain does not perceive itself, it imputes mental activity to a separate source — hallucinations of preternatural entities such as ghosts, angels, and aliens are perceived as actual beings; out-of-body and near-death experiences are sensed as external events instead of internal states. Likewise, the neural pattern of information that is our memories and personality — our “self” — is sensed as a soul. In this sense, the soul is an illusion.
Can Science Save Us?
There are many scientistic scenarios for how we might cheat death that I have evaluated in my books and columns, but here I wish to focus on the latest claim for evidence of an afterlife presented in Deepak Chopra’s 2006 book, Life After Death: Burden of Proof. According to Chopra, there are six lines of evidence that convince him that the soul is real and eternal:
Near-Death Experiences and Altered States of Consciousness. There are thousands of people who have been pronounced dead, usually from heart attacks, who are subsequently resuscitated and report experiencing some aspect of the afterlife — floating out of their bodies, passing through a tunnel or white light, and seeing loved ones or witnessing God, Jesus, or some manifestation of the divine on the other side. If these patients were brain dead, then their conscious “self,” their “soul,” must survive the death of the body.
ESP and Evidence of Mind. Here Chopra relies on psi research in remote viewing and telepathy, in which subjects locked in a room alone can apparently receive images from senders in another room without the use of the five senses.
Quantum Consciousness. The study of the actions of subatomic particles through quantum mechanics produces what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” where the observation of a particle in one location instantaneously effects a related particle at another location (which could theoretically be in another galaxy), in apparent violation of Einstein’s upper limit of the speed of light. Chopra takes this to mean that the universe is one giant quantum field in which everything (and everyone) is interconnected and can influence one another directly and instantly. Deepak and others also apply quantum mechanics to the study of consciousness to explain how the brain represents the entire tangible world through biochemical signals. Through quantum consciousness “we may find out how the brain might create subtler worlds, the kind traditionally known as heaven. If the secret lies not in brain chemistry but in awareness itself, the afterlife may turn out to be an extension of our present life, not a faraway mystical world.”
Psychic Mediumship and Talking to the Dead. Deepak reviews the extensive studies on psychic mediums and their apparent ability to communicate with the dead, and then reveals that he participated in an experiment in which contact was apparently made with his father, whose recent death triggered his research and writing of this book.
Prayer and Healing Studies. Chopra discusses research on distant intercessory prayer, in which patients who are prayed for from a distance by strangers appear to get well faster and more often than non-prayed for patients. This implies that action at a distance through thought alone — whether through the intervention of a deity or through some cosmic force — is real, can be manifested, and connects us to the cosmos and everything in it.
Information Fields, Morphic Resonance, and the Universal Life Force. Chopra claims that nature preserves data in the form of information fields, and he cites experiments conducted by the Cambridge University-trained scientist Rupert Sheldrake, who presents evidence that people can sense when someone is staring at the back of their head and neck, that dogs know when their owners are coming home, that it is easier to complete the Sunday crossword puzzle later in the day because others have already solved it, and that these and many other mysterious psychic phenomena can be explained by “morphic resonance fields” that connect all living organisms to one another. Information cannot be created or destroyed, only recombined into new patterns, so our personal patterns — our “souls” by my definition — are packages of information that precede birth and survive death.
For Deepak Chopra, these six lines of scientific evidence point to something already described thousands of years ago by the rishis, or sages of Vedic India, first spiritual leaders of Hinduism. “The rishis believed that knowledge wasn’t external to the knower but woven inside consciousness. Thus they had no need for an external God to solve the riddle of life and death,” Chopra explains. Our essence is what the rishis called Atman, and what we call the soul. “Soul and Atman are a spark of the divine, the invisible component that brings God’s presence into flesh and blood. The biggest difference between them is that in Vedanta the soul isn’t separate from God. Unlike the Christian soul, Atman cannot come from God or return to him. There is unity between the human and the divine.”
I confess that my Western scientific worldview makes it exceedingly (and often frustratingly) difficult for me to truly grasp what Deepak is talking about. I am quite sure that he will correct me on the following summary, but near as I can figure this is what he is saying. The universe is one giant conscious information field of timeless energy of which all of us are a part. Life is simply a temporary incarnation of this eternal field of consciousness, whose properties, he says, include: “The field works as a whole. It correlates distant events instantly. It remembers all events. It exists beyond time and space. It creates entirely within itself. Its creation grows and expands in an evolutionary direction. It is conscious.” Chopra says that what the rishis discovered long ago is consistent with the findings of modern science: “The field of consciousness is primary to every phenomenon in Nature because of the gap that exists between every electron, every thought, every instant in time. The gap is the reference point, the stillness at the heart of creation, where the universe correlates all events.”
In Chopra’s theory of the afterlife, birth and death are merely transitions to and from different manifestations of consciousness. “Without death there can be no present moment, for the last moment has to die to make the next one possible.” Thus, he deduces, “We live in an endlessly re-created universe.” There is no need to fear death, because “Death isn’t about what I possess but about what I can become. Today I see myself as a child of time, but I may become a child of eternity.” Finally, Chopra concludes, “We move from one world to another, we shed our old identity to experience ‘I am,’ the identity of the soul, and we assemble the ingredients of a completely unique life in our next body.” Chicken soup for the New Age soul.
Reality Check: What Science Really Says
Okay, back to earth. Here is the reality. It has been estimated that in the last 50,000 years about 106 billion humans were born. Of the 100 billion people born before the six billion living today, every one of them has died and not one has returned to confirm for us beyond a reasonable doubt that there is life after death. This data set does not bode well for promises of immortality and claims for an afterlife. But let’s review them one by one.
Near Death Experiences and Altered States of Consciousness
Five centuries ago demons haunted our world, with incubi and succubi tormenting their victims as they lay asleep in their beds. Two centuries ago spirits haunted our world, with ghosts and ghouls harassing their sufferers all hours of the night. Last century aliens haunted our world, with grays and greens abducting captives out of their beds and whisking them away for probing and prodding. Today people are experiencing near-death and out-of-body experiences, floating above their bodies, out of their bedrooms, and even off the planet into space.
What is going on here? Are these elusive creatures and mysterious phenomena in our world or in our minds? New evidence indicates that they are, in fact, a product of the brain. Neuroscientist Michael Persinger, in his laboratory at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada, for example, can induce all of these experiences in subjects by subjecting their temporal lobes to patterns of magnetic fields. I tried it and had a mild out-of-body experience.
Similarly, the September 19, 2002 issue of Nature, reported that the Swiss neuroscientist Olaf Blanke and his colleagues discovered that they could bring about out-of-body experiences (OBEs) through electrical stimulation of the right angular gyrus in the temporal lobe of a 43-year old woman suffering from severe epileptic seizures. In initial mild stimulations she reported “sinking into the bed” or “falling from a height.” More intense stimulation led her to “see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk.” Another stimulation induced “an instantaneous feeling of ‘lightness’ and ‘floating’ about two meters above the bed, close to the ceiling.”
In a related study reported in the 2001 book Why God Won’t Go Away, researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili found that when Buddhist monks meditate and Franciscan nuns pray their brain scans indicate strikingly low activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe, a region of the brain the authors have dubbed the Orientation Association Area (OAA), whose job it is to orient the body in physical space (people with damage to this area have a difficult time negotiating their way around a house). When the OAA is booted up and running smoothly there is a sharp distinction between self and non-self. When OAA is in sleep mode — as in deep meditation and prayer — that division breaks down, leading to a blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy, between feeling in body and out of body. Perhaps this is what happens to monks who experience a sense of oneness with the universe, or with nuns who feel the presence of God, or with alien abductees floating out of their beds up to the mother ship.
Sometimes trauma can trigger such experiences. The December 2001 issue of Lancet published a Dutch study in which of 344 cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death, 12 percent reported near-death experiences (NDEs), where they floated above their bodies and saw a light at the end of a tunnel. Some even described speaking to dead relatives.
The general explanation for all of these phenomena is that since our normal experience is of stimuli coming into the brain from the outside, when a part of the brain abnormally generates these illusions, another part of the brain interprets them as external events. Hence, the abnormal is thought to be the paranormal. In reality, it is just brain chemistry.
More specifically, NDEs and OBEs have biochemical correlates. We know, for example, that the hallucination of flying is triggered by atropine and other belladonna alkaloids, some of which are found in mandrake or jimson weed and were used by European witches and American Indian shamans. OBEs are easily induced by dissociative anesthetics such as the ketamines. DMT (dimethyl-tryptamine) causes the feeling of the world enlarging or shrinking. MDA (methylenedioxyamphetamine) stimulates the feeling of age regression where things we have long forgotten are brought back to memory. And, of course, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) triggers visual and auditory hallucinations and gives a feeling of oneness with the cosmos, among other effects. The fact that there are receptor sites in the brain for such artificially processed chemicals, means that there are naturally produced chemicals in the brain which, under certain conditions (the stress of trauma or an accident, for example) can induce any or all of the feelings typically described in a NDE. Thus, NDEs and OBEs are forms of wild “trips” induced by the extreme trauma of almost dying.
Psychologist and paranormal researcher Susan Blackmore has taken the hallucination hypothesis one step further by demonstrating why different people would experience similar effects, such as the tunnel. The visual cortex on the back of the brain is where information from the retina is processed. Hallucinogenic drugs and lack of oxygen to the brain (such as sometimes occurs near death) can interfere with the normal rate of firing by nerve cells in this area. When this occurs, “stripes” of neuronal activity move across the visual cortex, which is interpreted by the brain as concentric rings or spirals. These spirals may be “seen” as a tunnel. Similarly, in the OBE the experience of visualizing things from above is actually just an extension of a normal process we all do called “decentering” — picture yourself sitting on the beach or climbing a mountain and it will usually be from above looking down.
These studies are evidence that mind and brain are one. All experience is mediated by the brain. Large brain areas like the cortex coordinate imputes from smaller brain areas such as the temporal lobes, which themselves collate neural events from still smaller brain modules like the angular gyrus. This reduction continues all the way down to the single neuron level, where highly-selective neurons, sometimes described as “grandmother” neurons, fire only when subjects see someone they know. Caltech neuroscientists Christof Koch and Gabriel Kreiman, in conjunction with UCLA neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried, have even found a single neuron that fires when the subject is shown a photograph of Bill Clinton. The Monica neuron must be closely connected.
The search for the neural correlates of consciousness begin at this fundamental level, and then we ratchet up from there, as we look for emergent properties of complex systems of thought that arise from these simpler systems of neuronal connections. Of course, we are not aware of the workings of our own electrochemical systems. What we actually experience is what philosophers call qualia, or subjective states of thoughts and feelings that arise from a concatenation of neural events. But eventually even the grand mystery of consciousness will be solved by the penetrating tools of science.
This is the fate of the paranormal and the supernatural — to be subsumed into the normal and the natural. In fact, there is no paranormal or supernatural; there is only the normal and the natural … and mysteries yet to be explained.
ESP and Evidence of Mind
For over a century claims have been made for the existence of psi, or psychic phenomena. In the late 19th century, organizations like the Society for Psychical Research were founded to employ rigorous scientific methods in the study of psi, and they had many world-class scientists in support. In the 20th century, psi periodically found its way into serious academic research programs, from Joseph Rhine’s Duke University experiments in the 1920s to Daryl Bem’s Cornell University research in the 1990s.
In January 1994, for example, Bem and his late University of Edinburgh parapsychologist colleague Charles Honorton published “Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer” in the prestigious review journal Psychological Bulletin. Conducting a meta-analysis of 40 published experiments, the authors concluded: “the replication rates and effect sizes achieved by one particular experimental method, the ganzfeld procedure, are now sufficient to warrant bringing this body of data to the attention of the wider psychological community.” (A meta-analysis is a statistical technique that combines the results from many studies to look for an overall effect, even if the results from the individual studies were insignificant; the ganzfeld procedure places the “receiver” in a sensory isolation room with ping pong ball halves covering the eyes, headphones playing white noise over the ears, and the “sender” in another room psychically transmitting photographic or video images.)
Despite finding evidence for psi (subjects had a hit rate of 35 percent when 25 percent was expected by chance), Bem and Honorton lamented: “Most academic psychologists do not yet accept the existence of psi, anomalous processes of information or energy transfer (such as telepathy or other forms of extrasensory perception) that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms.”
Why don’t scientists accept psi? Daryl Bem has a stellar reputation as a rigorous experimentalist and he has presented us with statistically significant results. Aren’t scientists supposed to be open to changing their minds when presented with new data and evidence? The reason for skepticism is that we need both replicable data and a viable theory, both of which are missing in psi research.
Data. Both the meta-analysis and ganzfeld techniques have been challenged. Ray Hyman from the University of Oregon found inconsistencies in the experimental procedures used in different ganzfeld experiments (that were lumped together in Bem’s meta-analysis as if they used the same procedures), and that the statistical test employed (Stouffer’s Z) was inappropriate for such a diverse data set. He also found flaws in the target randomization process (the sequence the visual targets were sent to the receiver), resulting in a target selection bias: “All of the significant hitting was done on the second or later appearance of a target. If we examined the guesses against just the first occurrences of targets, the result is consistent with chance.” Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire conducted a meta-analysis of 30 more ganzfeld experiments and found no evidence for psi, concluding that psi data are non-replicable. Bem countered with 10 additional ganzfeld experiments he claims are significant, and he has additional research he plans to publish. And so it goes … with more to come in the data debate.
Theory. The deeper reason scientists remain skeptical of psi — and will even if more significant data are published — is that there is no explanatory theory for how psi works. Until psi proponents can explain how thoughts generated by neurons in the sender’s brain can pass through the skull and into the brain of the receiver, skepticism is the appropriate response. If the data shows that there is such a phenomena as psi that needs explaining (and I am not convinced that it does), then we still need a causal mechanism.
Quantum Consciousness
Deepak Chopra and others will counter that there is, in fact, a perfectly cogent theory of psi, and that is quantum consciousness, which was recently featured in the wildly popular and improbably-named film, What the #@*! Do We Know?! Artfully edited and featuring actress Marlee Matlin as a dreamy-eyed photographer trying to make sense of an apparently senseless universe, the film’s central tenet is that we create our own reality through consciousness and quantum mechanics. I met the producers of the film the weekend it opened when we were both on a Portland, Oregon television show, so I got an early screening. I never imagined that a film on consciousness and quantum mechanics would succeed, but it has grossed millions and a created cult following.
The film’s avatars are scientists with strong New Age leanings, whose jargon-laden sound bites amount to little more than what Caltech physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann once described as “quantum flapdoodle.” University of Oregon quantum physicist Amit Goswami, for example, says: “The material world around us is nothing but possible movements of consciousness. I am choosing moment by moment my experience. Heisenberg said atoms are not things, only tendencies.” Okay, Amit, I challenge you to leap out of a 20-story building and consciously choose the experience of passing safely through the ground’s tendencies.
The work of a Japanese researcher Masura Emoto, author of The Message of Water, is featured to show how thoughts change the structure of ice crystals — beautiful crystals form in a glass of water with the word “love” taped to it, whereas playing Elvis’s “Heartbreak Hotel” causes a crystal to split into two. Would his “Burnin’ Love” boil water?
The film’s nadir is an interview with “Ramtha,” a 35,000-year-old spirit channeled by a 58-year-old woman named J. Z. Knight. I wondered where humans spoke English with an Indian accent 35,000 years ago. Many of the films’ producers, writers, and actors are members of Ramtha’s “School of Enlightenment,” where New Age pabulum is dispensed in costly weekend retreats.
The attempt to link the weirdness of the quantum world (such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that the more precisely you know a particle’s position, the less precisely you know its speed, and vice versa) to mysteries of the macro world (such as consciousness) is not new. The best candidate to connect the two comes from physicist Roger Penrose and physician Stuart Hameroff, whose theory of quantum consciousness has generated much heat but little light in scientific circles.
Inside our neurons are tiny hollow microtubules that act like structural scaffolding. The conjecture (and that’s all it is) is that something inside the microtubules may initiate a wave function collapse that leads to the quantum coherence of atoms, causing neurotransmitters to be released into the synapses between neurons and thus triggering them to fire in a uniform pattern, thereby creating thought and consciousness. Since a wave function collapse can only come about when an atom is “observed” (i.e., affected in any way by something else), neuroscientist Sir John Eccles, another proponent of the idea, even suggests that “mind” may be the observer in a recursive loop from atoms to molecules to neurons to thought to consciousness to mind to atoms….
In reality, the gap between sub-atomic quantum effects and large-scale macro systems is too large to bridge. In his book The Unconscious Quantum, the University of Colorado particle physicist Victor Stenger demonstrates that for a system to be described quantum mechanically the system’s typical mass m, speed v, and distance d must be on the order of Planck’s constant h. “If mvd is much greater than h, then the system probably can be treated classically.” Stenger computes that the mass of neural transmitter molecules, and their speed across the distance of the synapse, are about three orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be influential. There is no micro-macro connection. Subatomic particles may be altered when they are observed, but the moon is there even if no one looks at it. So what the #$*! is going on here?
Physics envy. The history of science is littered with the failed pipedreams of ever-alluring reductionist schemes to explain the inner workings of the mind — schemes increasingly set forth in the ambitious wake of Descartes’ own famous attempt, some four centuries years ago, to reduce all mental functioning to the actions of swirling vortices of atoms, supposedly dancing their way to consciousness. Such Cartesian dreams provide a sense of certainty, but they quickly fade in the face of the complexities of biology. We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization. Biology envy.
Psychic Mediumship and Talking to the Dead
Deepak Chopra recounts his experience of participating in a university study of three psychics who claimed that they could communicate with those who had already “passed over” to the other side. Even though none of the psychics were told that Deepak was present, two of them identified him by name, two of them told him that he wanted to contact his recently deceased father, and one knew his childhood nickname in Hindi. He declared it a genuine experience, even while admitting that he had his doubts, especially since “My ‘father’ knew things I knew, but nothing more.”
That is more skepticism than most people muster, especially in emotion-laden readings that promise people a connection to a lost loved one. How do psychics appear to talk to the dead? I have written about this extensively, but in short, it’s a trick that involves utilizing two techniques:
Cold Reading, where you literally “read” someone “cold,” knowing nothing about them. You ask lots of questions and make numerous statements and see what sticks. “I’m getting a P name. Who is this please?” “He’s showing me something red. What is this please?” And so on. Most statements are wrong. But as B.F. Skinner showed in his experiments on superstitious behavior, subjects only need an occasional reinforcement to be convinced there is a real pattern (slot machines need only pay off infrequently to keep people involved). In an exposé I did on psychic medium John Edward for WABC New York, for example, we counted about one statement per second in the opening minute, as he riffled through names, dates, colors, diseases, conditions, situations, relatives, keepsakes, and the like. It goes so fast that you have to stop tape and go back to catch them all. His hit rate was below 10 percent, but those handful of hits were all his subjects needed to feel that they had made contact with a loved one.
Warm Reading utilizes known principles of psychology that apply to nearly everyone. The British mentalist and magician Ian Rowland’s insightful and encyclopedic book on how to do psychic readings, The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading, provides a list of high probability guesses, including identifying such items found in most homes that are sure to convince the mark that their loved one is in the room: A box of old photographs, some in albums, most not in albums; old medicine or medical supplies out of date; toys, books, mementoes from childhood; jewelry from a deceased family member; pack of cards, maybe a card missing; electronic gadget that no longer works; notepad or message board with missing matching pen; out of date note on fridge or near the phone; books about a hobby no longer pursued; out of date calendar; drawer that is stuck or doesn’t slide properly; keys that you can’t remember what they go to; watch or clock that no longer works. Here are some common peculiarities about people that are bound to give the impression that something paranormal is at work: Scar on knee; the number 2 in the home address; childhood accident involving water; clothing never worn; photos of loved ones in wallet or purse; wore hair long as a child, then shorter haircut; one earring with a missing match, and so forth. Mediums such as James Van Praagh, Sylvia Browne, Rosemary Altea and others on whom I have conducted extensive investigations are also facile at determining the cause of death by focusing either on the chest or head areas, and then exploring whether it was a slow or sudden end. They work their way through the half dozen major causes of death in rapid-fire manner. “He’s telling me there was a pain in the chest.” If they get a positive nod, they continue. “Did he have cancer, please? Because I’m seeing a slow death here.” If they get the nod, they take credit for the hit. If the subject hesitates, they will quickly shift to heart attack. If it is the head, they go for stroke or head injury from an automobile accident or fall.
I played a psychic for a day for a television special and found it remarkably easy to convince my subjects that I was really talking to the dead. Of course, anyone can talk to the dead. The hard part is getting the dead to talk back. Psychic mediums use trickery to give the illusion that the dead are communicating with us, and because people who come to mediums for help are emotionally fragile, they are also vulnerable to such effectual methods.
Prayer and Healing Studies
In April, 2006, The American Heart Journal published the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the effects of intercessory prayer on the health and recovery of patients. Directed by Harvard University Medical School cardiologist Herbert Benson, a long-time proponent of the salubrious effects of prayer, and partially funded by the Templeton Foundation, known for its support of research linking science and religion, the findings were eagerly awaited by members of both communities. There were a total of 1,802 patients from six U.S. hospitals that were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: 604 received intercessory prayer and were told that they may or may not receive prayer; 597 did not receive intercessory prayer and were also told that they may or may not receive prayer; and 601 received intercessory prayer and were told they would receive prayer. Prayers began the night before the surgery and continued daily for two weeks after. The prayers were allowed to pray in the manner of their choice, but they were instructed to ask “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.”
The results were unequivocal: there were no statistically significant differences between any of the groups. Prayer did not work. Worse, there were slight elevated complications (although not statistically significant) for the patients in the group who knew that they were being prayed for — a “nocebo” effect. Case closed.
As for previous studies in which the positive effects of prayer were claimed, there were numerous methodological problems with all of them, including:
Lack of Controls. Many of these studies failed to control for such intervening variables as age, sex, education, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, marital standing, degree of religiosity, and the fact that most religions have sanctions against such insalubrious behaviors as sexual promiscuity, alcohol and drug abuse, and smoking. When such variables are controlled for, the formerly significant results disappear. One study on recovery from hip surgery in elderly women failed to control for age; another study on church attendance and illness recovery did not consider that people in poorer health are less likely to attend church; a related study failed to control for levels of exercise.
Outcome differences. In one of the most highly publicized studies of cardiac patients prayed for by born-again Christians, 29 outcome variables were measured but on only six did the prayed-for group show improvement. In related studies, different outcome measures were significant. To be meaningful, the same measures need to be significant across studies, because if enough outcomes are measured some will show significant correlations by chance.
File-drawer problem. In several studies on the relationship between religiosity and mortality (religious people allegedly live longer), a number of religious variables were used, but only those with significant correlations were reported. Meanwhile, other studies using the same religiosity variables found different correlations and, of course, only reported those. The rest were filed away in the drawer of non-significant findings. When all variables are factored in together, religiosity and mortality show no relationship.
Operational definitions. When experimenting on the effects of prayer, what, precisely, is being studied? For example, what type of prayer is being employed? (Are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, and Shaman prayers equal?) Who or what is being prayed to? (Are God, Jesus, and a universal life force equivalent?) What is the length and frequency of the prayer? (Are two 10-minute prayers equal to one 20-minute prayer?) How many people are praying and does their status in the religion matter? (Is one priestly prayer identical to ten parishioner prayers?) Most prayer studies either lack such operational definitions, or there is no consistency across studies in such definitions.
Theological difficulties. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He should not need to be reminded or inveigled that someone needs healing. And what about all those patients who were prayed for and died? Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion.
Information Fields, Morphic Resonance,
and the Universal Life Force
Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to do a newspaper crossword puzzle later in the day? Me neither. But according to Rupert Sheldrake it is because the collective wisdom of the morning successes resonates throughout the cultural morphic field. In Sheldrake’s theory of “morphic resonance,” similar forms (morphs, or “fields of information”) reverberate and exchange information within a universal life force. “As time goes on, each type of organism forms a special kind of cumulative collective memory,” Sheldrake writes in his 1981 book A New Science of Life. “The regularities of nature are therefore habitual. Things are as they are because they were as they were.”
Morphic resonance, says Sheldrake, is “the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species,” and explains phantom limbs, homing pigeons, how dogs know when their owners are coming home, and such psychic phenomena as how people know when someone is staring at them. “Vision may involve a two-way process, an inward movement of light and an outward projection of mental images,” Sheldrake explains. Thousands of trials conducted by anyone who downloaded the experimental protocol from Sheldrake’s Web page “have given positive, repeatable, and highly significant results, implying that there is indeed a widespread sensitivity to being stared at from behind.”
Let’s examine this claim more closely. First, science is not normally conducted by strangers who happen upon a Web page protocol, so we have no way of knowing if these amateurs controlled for intervening variables and experimenter biases. Second, psychologists dismiss anecdotal accounts of this sense to a reverse self-fulfilling effect: a person suspects being stared at and turns to check; such head movement catches the eyes of would-be starers, who then turn to look at the staree, who thereby confirms the feeling of being stared at. Third, in 2000 John Colwell from Middlesex University, London, conducted a formal test utilizing Sheldrake’s suggested experimental protocol, with 12 volunteers who participated in 12 sequences of 20 stare or no-stare trials each, with accuracy feedback provided for the final nine sessions. Results: subjects were able to detect being stared at only when accuracy feedback was provided, which Colwell attributed to the subjects learning what was, in fact, a nonrandom presentation of the experimental trials. When the University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman also attempted to replicate Sheldrake’s research, he found that subjects detected stares at rates no better than chance. Fourth, there is an experimenter bias problem. Institute of Noetic Sciences’ researcher Marilyn Schlitz (a believer in psi) collaborated with Wiseman (a skeptic of psi) in replicating Sheldrake’s research, and discovered that when they did the staring Schlitz found statistically significant results, whereas Wiseman found chance results.
Sheldrake responds that skeptics dampen the morphic field’s subtle power, whereas believers enhance it. Of Wiseman, Sheldrake remarked: “Perhaps his negative expectations consciously or unconsciously influenced the way he looked at the subjects.”
Perhaps, but how can we tell the difference between negative-psi and non-psi? As it is said, the invisible and the nonexistent look the same.
Middle Land
So where does this leave us? I am, by temperament, a sanguine person, so I really hate to douse the flame of that doubtful future date with the cold water of skepticism in this present state. But I care what is actually true even more than what I hope is true, and these are the facts as I understand them to be.
I want to believe Messrs. Chopra, Bem, Goswami, Sheldrake, and the others. Really I do. I gave up on religion in graduate school, but I often catch myself slipping back into my former evangelical fervor now directed toward the wonders of science and nature. But this is precisely why I am skeptical. What they offer is too much like religion: it promises everything, delivers nothing (but hope), and is almost entirely based on faith, the very antithesis of science.
I am especially skeptical whenever people argue that the Next Big Thing will save us, in our lifetime, and fulfills our deepest emotional needs. Evangelicals never claim that the Second Coming is going to happen in the next generation (or that they will be “left behind” while others are saved). Likewise, secular doomsayers typically predict the demise of civilization within their allotted time (and, of course, that they will be part of the small surviving enclave). In parallel, prognosticators of both religious and secular utopias always include themselves as members of the chosen few, and paradise is always within reach.
Where is paradise? It is here. It is now. It is within us and without us. It is in our thoughts and in our actions. It is in our lives and in our loves. It is in our families and in our friends. It is in our communities and in our world. It is in the courage of our convictions and in the character of our souls.
Hope springs eternal, even if life is not.
photo of Deepak Chopra by Jeremiah Sullivan
Taking the Afterlife Seriously
by Deepak Chopra
“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the power of all true science.”
–Albert Einstein
I. Thanks for Coming — or Did You Even Show Up?
I have put Michael Shermer at a disadvantage by writing a book that bases the afterlife on the survival of consciousness. He has little interest in consciousness compared to his interest in laboratory-induced hallucinations and altered states. It’s a shame that he doesn’t grasp that the afterlife is about nothing but consciousness. (I don’t offhand know anyone who took their bodies with them.) Shermer’s focus on God is irrelevant to the argument. I give seven versions of life after death in my book, collected from every religious and philosophical tradition. He fails to address them or to realize that certain traditions (Platonism, Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta) do not posit a personal God.
Shermer’s retelling of the flaws in prayer studies is germane to my argument but only to a small degree — it by no means forms a sixth of my book, more like three pages. I must point out, however, that the 2006 Benson-Harvard refutation of prayer is far from being authoritative. Critics have found methodological flaws in it, and there are 19 other studies in the field that arrive at differing results, 11 of them showing that “prayer works.” Now to the holes in Shermer’s own approach. It may be curious that stimulating some area of the brain can induce out-of-body experiences or the feeling of sinking into a bed, or that Buddhist monks have low activity in their Orientation Association Area (OAA), as cited by Shermer. Unfortunately, these experiments have little bearing on the afterlife. Induced states are quite feeble as science. I can put a tourniquet on a person’s arm, depriving the nerves of blood flow, and thereby eliminate the sensation of touch. This doesn’t prove that quadriplegics with paralyzed limbs aren’t having a real experience. I can induce happiness by giving someone a glass of wine and having a pretty girl flirt with him. That doesn’t prove that happiness without alcohol isn’t real. The point is that a simulation isn’t the real thing or a credible stand-in for it.
Shermer doesn’t adhere to the scientific impartiality he so vocally espouses. Loading the dice turns out to be fairly standard for him. For example, he cites the December 2001 issue of Lancet that published a Dutch study in which, out of 344 cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death, 12 percent reported near-death experiences. (The actual figure was 18 percent, by the way.) Immediately he skips on to say that near-death experiences can be induced in the laboratory. Hold on a minute. Did Shermer miss the point entirely? The patients in the Dutch study, who suffered massive heart attacks in the hospital, had their near-death experiences when there was no measurable activity in the brain, when they were in fact brain dead. Did he quote the astonishment of Dr. Pin van Lommel, the Dutch cardiologist who observed this effect? No. Did he go into the baffling issue of why the vast majority of resuscitated patients (over 80 percent) don’t report near-death experiences? That’s pretty important if you are claiming that all this near-death hokum can be induced in the lab with a few electrodes.
Leaving out the heart of the matter, as Shermer does, smacks of unfairness, for I rely on this same Dutch study and give all the particulars. Skepticism is only credible when it’s not being devious. But Shermer often deliberately misses the point. I cite a University of Virginia study that to date has found over 2,000 children who vividly remember their past lives. In many cases they can name places and dates. The facts they relate have been verified in many cases. Even more astonishing, over 200 of these children exhibit birthmarks that resemble the way they remember dying in their most recent lifetime. (One boy, for example, recalled being killed with a shotgun, and his chest exhibited a scatter-shot of red birthmarks). Unable to refute this phenomenon or imagine a counter-study, Shermer fails to mention it. He snipes at the easy targets to bolster his blanket skepticism. I wish Shermer realized that true skepticism suspends both belief and disbelief. Being a debunker of curiosity is something science doesn’t need.
This points to a broader problem with his arguments: the problem of dueling results. Let’s say a skeptic offers in evidence a study that asks five children to describe a previous incarnation, and let’s say that only those who are coached, either by parents or researchers, come up with such stories. Has skepticism refuted the original research? Of course it hasn’t. The first study stands on its own, by sheer force of numbers, demanding explanation. But by Shermer’s logic if some children don’t remember a past lifetime, those who do must be categorically dismissed. By analogy, if I study twenty mothers who smile when shown their baby’s picture, anyone can find twenty others (suffering from post-partum depression, for example) who don’t. But that doesn’t prove that mothers don’t love their babies. The second experiment is an anomaly.
No doubt Shermer will want to lecture me on the need for replication in science. Yet this is the very thing he conveniently ignores. Studies on near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, memories of past lifetimes, remote viewing, and so forth — all crucial to the reality of life after death — have been well replicated. Shermer finds one study that induces similar states (“similar” being a very tricky word here) and he walks away satisfied. He already knows a priori that “paranormal” findings must be false, so why bother to engage them seriously? Extending our understanding of normal doesn’t interest him.
The focus of science should be on the survival of consciousness after death, not on the sideshow of fraud, pseudoscience, religious dogma, and the other straw men Shermer knocks down. For example, I rely a great deal on the possibility that mind extends outside the body. This is obviously crucial, since with the death of the brain, our minds can only survive if they don’t depend on the brain.
There are astonishing results in this area. One of the most famous, performed at the engineering department at Princeton and validated many times over, asked ordinary people to sit in the room with a random number generator. As the machine printed out a random series of 0s and 1s, the subjects were instructed to try to make it produce more zeroes. They didn’t touch the machine but only willed it to deviate from randomness. Did they succeed? Absolutely. Did other identical or similar experiments succeed? Over and over. Does Shermer even touch on this matter, so crucial to my argument? No.
He displays an amazing ability to avoid the important stuff. He writes, for example, “The ultimate fallacy of all such prayer and healing research is theological: If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He should not need to be reminded or inveigled that someone needs healing.” This is simplistic theology at best second-guessing an omniscient and omnipresent God is a tautology by definition, since such a God, being everywhere and performing all acts, makes no choices at all. Such a consciousness encompasses good and bad, disease and health, equally. (As much as possible I avoid using a personal pronoun for God, but it’s awkward since “It” doesn’t work in English. I am referring to a God that is closer to a universal field than anything else we can imagine.) Does an omnipotent God even need a creation to begin with? The question is logically unanswerable. Fortunately, Shermer’s Sunday School God, a patriarch with a white beard sitting above the clouds, plays no role in my argument — or in the traditions of Buddhism, Vedanta, etc. mentioned at the outset. Did my book defend the Judeo-Christian God? Did it argue for a physical place called heaven (or hell)? Did I praise the joys of the hereafter in order to denigrate life here on earth? Not for a moment. I specifically rooted the afterlife in ordinary states of consciousness that no one doubts, such as dream, imagination, projection, myth, metaphor, meditation, and other aspects of awareness that give us clues about the workings of the mind overall. Shermer doesn’t engage those connections, either.
Since he often lumps me in with other authors whom he disdains and treats cavalierly, I can only assume that he uses the same slipshod reasoning on them, too. I certainly know for a fact that Shermer misrepresents and distorts the groundbreaking work of Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist who graduated with first-class honors from Cambridge and whose curriculum vitae (not to mention acumen, curiosity, and intelligence) a gaggle of skeptics can only envy.
But let’s concede that Shermer knows he’s preaching to the choir and can afford all this rhetorical by-your-leave. His review hasn’t actually offered anything beyond a self-indulgent expansion on his first sentence, borrowed from a bumper sticker: I DON’T KNOW AND YOU DON’T EITHER. He takes this to be humorous; in fact it is distressingly dogmatic. Is he so proud of his skepticism that literally he can tell what someone else doesn’t know? Without dragging him into philosophical deep waters, I must point out that dismissing opposing views even before they are stated seems like fairly spooky solipsism.
In the end, debating tactics offer entertainment value but are a dubious way to get at truth. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that the true test of any scientific or philosophical system is how much it can explain. I believe that Shermer sincerely agrees with this, despite his often unfair tactics and his condescension to spirituality in general. The old-fashioned materialism that underlies his opinions stands in stark contrast to quantum physics, which long ago opened up an unseen world where linear cause-and-effect no longer operates, where intuition has made more breakthroughs than logic. Virtual reality, populated with virtual photons and subatomic interactions that operate beyond the speed of light — a realm where events are instantaneously coordinated across billions of light years — is the foundation of our physical world. Pace Shermer, the possibility of intelligence and consciousness in the universe is completely viable; we must arrive at new theories to account for life after death (among many other mysteries) by opening ourselves to the origins of our own consciousness. It’s all very well to watch various parts of the brain light up on an MRI, but to claim that this is true knowledge of the mind is like putting a stethoscope to the roof of the Astrodome and claiming that you understand the rules of football.
If Shermer wants to have a serious debate about the persistence of consciousness after physical death, I eagerly invite it. But I must in all candor ask him to look at consciousness first. He hasn’t made the slightest effort so far, and yet that was the entire subject of my book.
II. Science and the Afterlife
To catalog how much Shermer gets wrong isn’t the same as proving that the afterlife is real. But the proofs that it isn’t are not very sound. Hamlet refers to death as “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.” For all intents and purposes, this argument has sufficed for materialists ever since. But people do cross the boundary between life and death only to return — the number of near-death experiences is many thousands by now. (For anyone who wants an in-depth exposure to the phenomenon, see www.near-death.com. Contrary to what Shermer claims, these aren’t artifacts of an oxygen-deprived brain; they are meaningful experiences full of detail and coherence, and often they appear after the brain ceases all activity. The existence of studies in which people do not have such experiences seems irrelevant. I can offer experiments where people can’t identify the notes of the musical scale, but that doesn’t mean perfect pitch is an illusion.
I was particularly interested in the resemblance between modern near-death experiences and those reported for hundreds of years in Tibet. People who return from the dead in that culture are known as delogs, and what they experience isn’t a Christian heaven or hell — in this country 90 percent of near-death experiences, by the way, are positive — but the complex layers of the Buddhist Bardo. In our society heaven is generally reported by those who have near-death experiences as being like green pastures or blue skies; children tend to report a child’s heaven populated by scampering lambs and other baby animals.
This made me realize that Hamlet was right to call death an undiscovered country, not because the living cannot reach it but because heaven’s geography keeps shifting. If we look at how various cultures perceive the afterlife, there are roughly seven categories:
Paradise: Your soul finds itself in a perfected world surrounding God. You go to Paradise as a reward and never leave. (If you are bad, you go to Satan’s home and never leave it.)
The Godhead: Your soul returns to God, but not in any particular place. You discover the location of God as a timeless state infused with his presence
The Spirit World: Your soul rests in a realm of departed spirits. You are drawn back to those you loved in this life. Or you rejoin your ancestors, who are gathered with the great Spirit.
Transcendence: Your soul performs a vanishing act in which a person dissolves, either quickly or gradually. The pure soul rejoins the sea of consciousness from which it was born.
Transmigration (or Metempsychosis): Your soul is caught in the cycle of rebirth. Depending on one’s karma, each soul rises or falls from lower to higher life forms — and even may be reborn in objects. The cycle continues eternally until your soul escapes through higher realization.
Awakening: Your soul arrives in the light. You see with complete clarity for the first time, realizing the truth of existence that was masked by being in a physical body.
Dissolution: Eternity is nothingness. As the chemical components of your body return to basic atoms and molecules, the consciousness created by the brain disappears completely. You are no more.
There is no common denominator here except one: consciousness itself. We have to shift our notion of the afterlife from being a place to being a state of awareness. Once we do that, life after death becomes much more plausible. Instead of arguing over religious beliefs, we can ask rational questions:
Can consciousness survive the body’s death?
Is there mind outside the brain?
Can we know the states of consciousness that belong to the afterlife without dying?
Does consciousness have a basis outside time and space?
To me these are rational questions, and we can devise experiments to answer them. But before going into that, the issue most people want to settle is “What happens after we die?” Since this remains such a pressing question, let me offer the evidence that surfaced when I looked at cultures East and West. Leaving aside the place a person might go to (my position is that there is no “where” after death; everything is projected in consciousness, including heaven and hell), the afterlife appears to unfold in the following stages:
The physical body stops functioning. The dying person may not be aware of this but eventually knows that it has occurred.
The physical world vanishes. This can happen by degrees; there can be a sense of floating upward or of looking down on familiar places as they recede.
The dying person feels lighter, suddenly freed of limitation.
The mind and sometimes the senses continue to operate. Gradually, however, what is perceived is non-physical.
A presence grows that is felt to be divine. This presence can be clothed in a light or in the body of angels or gods. The presence can communicate to the dying person.
Personality and memory begin to fade, but the sense of “I” remains.
This “I” has an overwhelming sense of moving on to another phase of existence.
As much as possible I have eliminated religious wording here because the persistence of consciousness has to be universal. It can’t depend on specific beliefs, which change over time and from place to place. (When he dies, Michael Shermer will be relieved to survive, but perhaps he will be disappointed that his long service to fundamental Christianity in youth, followed by long service to skepticism, won’t give him a special place in heaven. Nor will it lock the gates against him.)
Right now there are many reasons why science is reluctant to test any of these propositions about the survival of consciousness. First and foremost is the ideology of materialism. Shermer stands in for thousands of actual scientists who see the world entirely in material terms. For them, consciousness is as alien as the soul. Both are invisible, immaterial, and unmeasurable and therefore ipso facto unreal. By these standards virtual photons should also be unreal, but they aren’t (not that Shermer has bothered to become conversant with quantum physics). Other reasons include peer pressure — i.e., ridicule — even when a researcher is brilliant and scrupulous to the nth degree. Lack of funding is a problem, naturally, and above all there is the time-honored antithesis between science and religion. In an either/or world, it’s hard to convince the religionists that rationality has a spiritual place or the scientists that your research isn’t just a stalking horse for the Bible — see the recent social debate over Intelligent Design where neither side was willing to see the slightest merit in the other.
None of these obstacles, however, has proven insurmountable. Let me offer some highlights in the research devoted to answering the most crucial questions about the possibility of life after death:
Mind Over Matter
My core argument is based on consciousness being a field, like matter and energy fields, that we are all imbedded in, whether here and now or after death. It would help us greatly if our minds could alter the field. Then we would have a link between the two models of mind and matter. Such a link was provided by Helmut Schmidt, a researcher working for Boeing’s aerospace laboratory in Seattle. Beginning in the mid-Sixties, Schmidt set out to construct a series of “quantum machines” that could emit random signals, with the aim of seeing if ordinary people could alter those signals using nothing more than their minds. The first machine detected radioactive decay from Strontium-90; each electron that was given off lit up either a red, blue, yellow, or green light. Schmidt asked ordinary people to predict, with the press of a button, which light would be illuminated next.
At first no one performed better than random, or 25 percent, in picking one of the four lights. Then Schmidt it on the idea of using psychics instead, and his first results were encouraging: they guessed the correct light 27 percent of the time. But he didn’t know if this was a matter of clairvoyance — seeing the result before it happened — or something more active, actually changing the random pattern of electrons being emitted.
So he built a second machine that generated only two signals, call them plus and minus. A circle of lights was set up, and if the machine generated a plus, a light would come on in the clockwise direction while a minus would make one light up in the counter-clockwise direction. Left to itself, the machine would light up an equal number of pluses and minuses; what Schmidt wanted his subjects to do was to will the lights to move clockwise only. He found two subjects who had remarkable success. One could get the lights to move clockwise 52.5 percent of the time. An increase of 2.5 percent over randomness doesn’t sound dramatic, but Schmidt calculated that the odds were 10 million to one against the same thing occurring by chance. The other subject was just as successful, but oddly enough, he couldn’t make the lights move clockwise. Hard as he tried, they moved counter-clockwise, yet with the same deviation from randomness. Later experiments with new subjects raised the success rate to 54 percent, although the strange anomaly that the machine would go in the wrong direction, often persisted. (No explanation was ever found for this.) In effect, Schmidt was proving that an observer can change activity in the quantum field using the mind alone.
In an earlier part of this article I refer to replications of these experiments at Princeton and other laboratories. After 12 years of study, it was found that about two-thirds of ordinary people could influence the outcome of the machine, unlike in Schmidt’s study, where only talented psychics were used. After examining the results in detail in her excellent book, The Field, writer Lynne McTaggart sees a complete revolution in consciousness: “On the most profound level, the [Princeton] studies also suggest that reality is created by each of us only by our attention. At the lowest level of mind and matter, each of us creates the world.”
Remote Viewing
If someone could alter the field simply by looking at it, that would come even closer to the premise that each of us is imbedded in the field. An intriguing proof of this was provided by a machine built by physicists at Stanford called a SQUID, or superconducting quantum interference device. It’s enough for us to know that this device, which measures the possible activity of subatomic particles, specifically quarks, is very well shielded from all outside magnetic forces. This shielding begins with layers of copper and aluminum, but to insure that no outside force can affect the mechanism, exotic metals like niobium and “mu metal” wrap the inner core.
In 1972 a SQUID was installed in the basement of a laboratory at Stanford, apparently doing nothing except tracing out the same hill-and-valley S-curve on a length of graph paper. This curve represented the constant magnetic field of the earth; if a quark passed through the field the machine would register it by changes in the pattern being drawn. A young laser physicist named Hal Puthoff (later to become a noted quantum theorist) decided that aside from its main use, the SQUID would make a perfect test of psychic powers. Very few people, including the scientists at Sanford, knew the exact inner construction of the machine.
A letter Puthoff wrote in search of a psychic who would take up the challenge was responded to by Ingo Swann, a New York artist with psychic abilities. Swann was flown to California without being told in advance about either the test or the SQUID. When he first saw it, he seemed a bit distracted and baffled. But he agree to “look” inside the machine, and as he did, the S-curve on the graph paper changed pattern — something it almost never did — only to go back to its normal functioning as soon as Swann stopped paying attention to it.
A startled Puthoff asked him to repeat this, so for 45 seconds Swann concentrated upon seeing the inside of the machine, and for exactly that interval the recoding device drew a new pattern, a long plateau on the paper instead of hills and valleys. Swann then drew a sketch of what he saw as the inner workings of the SQUID, and when these were checked with an expert, they perfectly matched the actual construction. Swann was vague about whether he had changed the magnetic input that the machine was built to measure; he offered that he thought he was affecting its niobium core. But it also turned out that if he merely thought about the SQUID, not trying to change it at all, the recording device showed alterations in the surrounding magnetic field. In the years since 1972, many other experiments in remote viewing have successfully taken place.
Intelligence in Nature
If we survive death in our consciousness, we’d like to take human qualities with us, such as intelligence. Is there proof that intelligence is innate in nature? I will skip over the argument by design since it isn’t logically irrefutable and give an amusing practical example. Many dog owners will attest to the ability of a dog or cat to know what the owner is thinking. A few minutes before going on a walk, a dog gets excited and restless; on the day when a cat is going to be taken to the vet, it disappears and is nowhere to be found. These casual observations led the ingenious British researcher Rupert Sheldrake, a trained biologist now turned speculative thinker, to conduct a few controlled studies. He wanted to know if dogs and cats can actually read their owners’ minds. One study was very simple: Sheldrake phoned up 65 vets in the London area and asked them if it was common for cat owners to cancel appointments because their cats had disappeared that day. Sixty-four vets responded that it was very common, and the sixty-fifth had given up making appointments for cats because too many couldn’t be located when they were supposed to come in.
Sheldrake decided to perform an experiment using dogs. The fact that a dog gets excited when the time comes for going on a walk means little if the walk is routinely scheduled for the same time very day, or if the dog gets visual cues from its owner that he is preparing to go out. Therefore Sheldrake placed dogs in outbuildings completely isolated from their owners; he then asked the owner, at randomly selected times, to think about walking the dog five minutes before going to fetch them. In the meantime the dog was constantly videotaped in its isolated location. Sheldrake found that more than half the dogs ran to the door, waging their tails, circling restlessly, or otherwise showing anticipation of going for a walk, and they kept up this behavior until their owners appeared. No dog showed anticipatory behavior, however, when their owners were not thinking about taking them for a walk.
So far, this suggests something intriguing, that the bond between a pet and its owner could result in a subtle connection at the level of thought. Polls show that about 60 percent of Americans believe they have had a telepathic experience, so this result is not completely startling. The next leap is quite startling, however. After writing up his results with telepathic pets, Sheldrake received an email from a woman in New York City who said that her African grey parrot not only read her thoughts but responded to them with speech. The woman and her husband might be sitting in another room, out of sight from the bird, whose name is N’kisi, and if they were feeling hungry, N’kisi would suddenly say, “You want some yummy.” If the owner and her husband were thinking about going out, N’kisi might say, “You gotta go out, see ya later.”
Greatly intrigued, Sheldrake contacted the owner, an artist named Aimee Morgana. The situation he found was remarkable even without telepathy. African gray parrots are among the most linguistically talented of all birds, and N’kisi had a huge vocabulary of over 700 words. More remarkable still, he used them like human speech, not “parroting” a word mindlessly but applying it where appropriate; if he saw something that was red, he said “red,” and if the object was another color, he said that color. A decade ago this talent would have been unbelievable, until a researcher named Dr. Irene Pepperberg, after twenty years of work with her own African gray, had proved beyond a doubt that it could use language meaningfully. Now associated with MIT, Pepperberg made a breakthrough, not just in our understanding of animal intelligence, but in the possibility that mind exists outside the brain.
It was this possibility, which Sheldrake and others call “extended mind,” that N’kisi seemed to prove. Aimee had some astonishing anecdotes to relate. When she was watching a Jackie Chan movie on television, one shot showed Chan perilously perched on a girder. When the shot came on, N’kisi said, “Don’t fall down,” even though his cage was behind the television with no line of sight to the picture. When an automobile commercial came on next, N’kisi said, “That’s my car.” Another time Aimee was reading a book that had the lines, “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” and simultaneously from another room the bird said, “The color is black.”
Sheldrake wanted to confirm all of this for himself. On his first visit, Aimee gave him a taste of N’kisi’s telepathy: she looked at a picture of a girl from a magazine, and with remarkable clarity from the adjoining room the parrot said, “That’s a girl.” The next step was a formal experiment. If N’kisi could understand words and also had telepathic abilities, could the two be tested together? The experiment Sheldrake devised was quite strange if he hadn’t already seen what N’kisi could do — he proposed that Aimee would look at pictures that corresponded to words her parrot already knew. Aimee would sit in one room while N’kisi remained isolated in another. The bird would have two minutes to utter a “key word” that matched the picture. If he said the word in that time, it would count as a hit. If he didn’t say the word, or if he said it after the two minutes were up, it counted as a miss.
To insure neutrality, someone besides Aimee chose both the pictures and the key words that matched each one. (This proved unfair to the bird, actually, since the neutral chooser picked a word like “TV” that N’kisi had only said once or twice before; it didn’t utter these words at the right time during the experiment, nor did he say them at all.) After all the trials were over, the tapes of what N’kisi had said were played for three judges, who wrote down what they heard; unless N’kisi distinctly said the right word, as transcribed by all three judges, a hit wouldn’t count. The results were beyond ordinary comprehension. For example, when Aimee looked at a picture showing scantily clad bathers on a beach, N’kisi mumbled for a bit, then all three judges heard him say, “Look at my pretty naked body.” He didn’t say other, irrelevant key words; in between saying the right words twice, the bird only whistled and made vocal tones. When Aimee looked at a picture of someone talking on the telephone, N’kisi said, “What’cha doin’ on the phone?” Perhaps the most intriguing response was when Aimee concentrated on a picture of flowers. Instead of simply uttering the key word “flower,” N’kisi said, “That’s a pic of flowers.”
How did he do overall? Out of 71 trails, N’kisi got 23 hits, as compared to the 7.4 hits that would have been expected if the results were random. Sheldrake points out that this is quite a significant outcome, all the more because N’kisi wasn’t aware that he was being tested and often said the right key word after the allotted time was up. In a small Manhattan apartment another bit of proof added to mounting evidence that the mind isn’t solely human property and in fact might exist outside the brain. Communication between the animal kingdom and us has an eerie ring, but pets can’t cheat and they have no ulterior motive for proving that they are special in their abilities. India’s Vedic rishis long ago asserted that the entire universe is intelligent, because it is permeated by consciousness.
The Mind Field
If consciousness is an aspect of the field, then our brains should operate along the lines of a field. This seems to be true. For one thing, it’s impossible to explain how the brain coordinates millions of separate events simultaneously unless something like a mind field is present. Take a compass out of your pocket anywhere on earth, shake it, and a few seconds later the wobbly needle will always settle pointing north. If every person on the planet did this at exactly twelve midnight, billions of compasses would be doing the same thing simultaneously, a fact that doesn’t surprise us because we know that the Earth’s magnetic field is responsible. It would be absurd to claim that each compass decided randomly to pick north.
Yet we say that about the brain. For you to think the word “rhinoceros” and see a mental image of that animal, millions of brain cells have to act simultaneously. (We will leave aside the more difficult question of why you picked “rhinoceros” out of all the words you could have chosen, since that choice can be based on reason, emotion, nonsense, or private associations in memory. A computer can be taught to select any given word using an pre-set algorithm, but it has no ability to decide on what personal, emotional, or imaginative basis to pick words — you do.) The neurons involved in word choice don’t jumble through the alphabet to find one letter at a time; they don’t sound out an array of words one syllable at a time; nor do they leaf through a photo archive to match the right word to the right animal. Instead, the correct brain activity arises simultaneously.
Neurologists can watch various portions of the brain light up at the same time, but this is one area where subjective experience is stronger, since we all know first hand that we can utter words in any order and call up any image in our imagination. The brain is acting holistically like a field, coordinating different events at the same time, except that we know the brain isn’t literally a field. It’s an object. Fields are invisible, and their basic components are energy and information. Which sounds much more like a mind than a physical organ, however complex.
You would think that since the brain depends on electrical signals, it would be affected by the soup of radio, television, microwave, and many other electromagnetic emissions that surround us. Apparently this isn’t so, and psychic researchers have gone so far as to isolate subjects in Faraday cages that block all electromagnetic energy without altering their abilities to see at a distance or exhibit other psychic phenomena. It will be fascinating to explore the field phenomena that are subtler than electromagnetism — the afterlife could well be one of them.
Can it be that the universe is organic, holistic, and aware? I am perfectly willing to accept Shermer’s declaration that the burden of proof lies with those who claim this rather than with skeptics. But logically that’s not actually true. We cannot prove that the universe doesn’t have a mind, because we aren’t mindless. Even when we declare that atoms and molecules act mindlessly, that is a mental statement. Nobody has ever experienced mindlessness; therefore we have nothing to base it on, just as a fish has nothing but wetness to base its reality on — dryness is a theological fancy under the sea.
In the end, I realize that Shermer and I are speaking two different languages. He makes no reference to consciousness, the field, quantum mechanics, advanced neurology, or philosophy. I’d like to hear arguments from someone more up to date in these fields. It’s a strange feeling when somebody in a Model A Ford challenges you to a race when you are in a Lexus, but even stranger when he thinks he’s going to win.
Finally, Shermer adopts a word like “soul” in order to refute it when he doesn’t even understand or clarify what the soul is. Does the soul contain the total information stored in our brains? Is it a personal localization in the quantum field? Is it our connection to the realm of archetypes and myths? Information does persist, and so do archetypes. Without a doubt the electrical activity in the brain is a localization of quantum probabilities. How, then, can these phenomena be objects of serious scientific study while Shermer feels nothing but disdain for the soul? He simply assumes a Sunday School definition, and like his assumptions about God on his throne and other childish notions, it’s no wonder his arguments against life after death are scientific non-starters.
The following debate between Deepak Chopra and Michael Shermer came about after the widely read and referenced debate the two had last year on the virtues and value of skepticism. Deepak has a new book out on the subject, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof (Harmony, 2006 ISBN 0307345785), and Michael has written extensively about claims of evidence for the afterlife, so the two of them thought it would be stimulating to have a debate on the topic. Michael read Deepak’s book and goes first in the debate, offering his assessment of the “proofs” presented in Deepak’s book, then Deepak responds. Shorter blog-length versions are published on www.HuffingtonPost.com, with the longer versions presented here and on www.intentBlog.com.
photo of Michael Shermer
Hope Springs Eternal:
Science, the Afterlife & the Meaning of Life
by Michael Shermer
I once saw a bumper sticker that read: Militant Agnostic: I Don’t Know and You Don’t Either.
This is my position on the afterlife: I don’t know and you don’t either. If we knew for certain that there is an afterlife, we would not fear death as we do, we would not mourn quite so agonizingly the death of loved ones, and there would be no need to engage in debates on the subject.
Because no one knows for sure what happens after we die, we deal with the topic in diverse ways through religion, literature, poetry, science, and even humor. The perpetually anxious Woody Allen has this workaround: “It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Steven Wright thinks he’s figured out a solution: “I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”
Humor aside, since I am a scientist and claims are made that there is scientific evidence for life after death, let us analyze the data for that doubtful future date, and consider what its possibility may mean for our present state.
21 Grams: The Nature of the Soul
What is it that supposedly survives the death of the physical body? The soul. There are about as many different understandings of the nature of the soul as there are religions and spiritual movements. The general belief is that the soul is a conscious ethereal substance that is the unique essence of a living being that survives its incarnation in flesh.
The ancient Hebrew word for soul is nephesh, or “life” or “vital breath”; the Greek word for soul is psyche, or “mind”; and the Roman Latin word for soul is anima, or “spirit” or “breath.” The soul is the essence that breathes life into flesh, animates us, gives us our vital spirit. Given the lack of knowledge about the natural world at the time these concepts were first formed, it is not surprising these ancient peoples reached for such ephemeral metaphors as mind, breath, and spirit. One moment a little dog is barking, prancing, and wagging its tail, and in the next moment it is a lump of inert flesh. What happened in that moment?
In 1907 a Massachusetts physician named Duncan MacDougall tried to find out by weighing six dying patients before and after their death. He reported in the medical journal American Medicine that there was a 21-gram difference. Even though his measurements were crude and varying, and no one has been able to replicate his findings, it has nonetheless grown to urban legendary status as the weight of the soul. The implication is that the soul is a thing that can be weighed. Is it?
In science we define our terms with semantic precision. I define the “soul” as the unique pattern of information that represents the essence of a person. By this definition, unless there is some medium to retain the pattern of our personal information after we die, our soul dies with us. Our bodies are made of proteins, coded by our DNA, so with the disintegration of DNA our protein patterns are lost forever. Our memories and personality are stored in the patterns of neurons firing in our brains, so when those neurons die it spells the death of our memories and personality, similar to the ravages of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, only final.
Because the brain does not perceive itself, it imputes mental activity to a separate source — hallucinations of preternatural entities such as ghosts, angels, and aliens are perceived as actual beings; out-of-body and near-death experiences are sensed as external events instead of internal states. Likewise, the neural pattern of information that is our memories and personality — our “self” — is sensed as a soul. In this sense, the soul is an illusion.
Can Science Save Us?
There are many scientistic scenarios for how we might cheat death that I have evaluated in my books and columns, but here I wish to focus on the latest claim for evidence of an afterlife presented in Deepak Chopra’s 2006 book, Life After Death: Burden of Proof. According to Chopra, there are six lines of evidence that convince him that the soul is real and eternal:
Near-Death Experiences and Altered States of Consciousness. There are thousands of people who have been pronounced dead, usually from heart attacks, who are subsequently resuscitated and report experiencing some aspect of the afterlife — floating out of their bodies, passing through a tunnel or white light, and seeing loved ones or witnessing God, Jesus, or some manifestation of the divine on the other side. If these patients were brain dead, then their conscious “self,” their “soul,” must survive the death of the body.
ESP and Evidence of Mind. Here Chopra relies on psi research in remote viewing and telepathy, in which subjects locked in a room alone can apparently receive images from senders in another room without the use of the five senses.
Quantum Consciousness. The study of the actions of subatomic particles through quantum mechanics produces what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” where the observation of a particle in one location instantaneously effects a related particle at another location (which could theoretically be in another galaxy), in apparent violation of Einstein’s upper limit of the speed of light. Chopra takes this to mean that the universe is one giant quantum field in which everything (and everyone) is interconnected and can influence one another directly and instantly. Deepak and others also apply quantum mechanics to the study of consciousness to explain how the brain represents the entire tangible world through biochemical signals. Through quantum consciousness “we may find out how the brain might create subtler worlds, the kind traditionally known as heaven. If the secret lies not in brain chemistry but in awareness itself, the afterlife may turn out to be an extension of our present life, not a faraway mystical world.”
Psychic Mediumship and Talking to the Dead. Deepak reviews the extensive studies on psychic mediums and their apparent ability to communicate with the dead, and then reveals that he participated in an experiment in which contact was apparently made with his father, whose recent death triggered his research and writing of this book.
Prayer and Healing Studies. Chopra discusses research on distant intercessory prayer, in which patients who are prayed for from a distance by strangers appear to get well faster and more often than non-prayed for patients. This implies that action at a distance through thought alone — whether through the intervention of a deity or through some cosmic force — is real, can be manifested, and connects us to the cosmos and everything in it.
Information Fields, Morphic Resonance, and the Universal Life Force. Chopra claims that nature preserves data in the form of information fields, and he cites experiments conducted by the Cambridge University-trained scientist Rupert Sheldrake, who presents evidence that people can sense when someone is staring at the back of their head and neck, that dogs know when their owners are coming home, that it is easier to complete the Sunday crossword puzzle later in the day because others have already solved it, and that these and many other mysterious psychic phenomena can be explained by “morphic resonance fields” that connect all living organisms to one another. Information cannot be created or destroyed, only recombined into new patterns, so our personal patterns — our “souls” by my definition — are packages of information that precede birth and survive death.
For Deepak Chopra, these six lines of scientific evidence point to something already described thousands of years ago by the rishis, or sages of Vedic India, first spiritual leaders of Hinduism. “The rishis believed that knowledge wasn’t external to the knower but woven inside consciousness. Thus they had no need for an external God to solve the riddle of life and death,” Chopra explains. Our essence is what the rishis called Atman, and what we call the soul. “Soul and Atman are a spark of the divine, the invisible component that brings God’s presence into flesh and blood. The biggest difference between them is that in Vedanta the soul isn’t separate from God. Unlike the Christian soul, Atman cannot come from God or return to him. There is unity between the human and the divine.”
I confess that my Western scientific worldview makes it exceedingly (and often frustratingly) difficult for me to truly grasp what Deepak is talking about. I am quite sure that he will correct me on the following summary, but near as I can figure this is what he is saying. The universe is one giant conscious information field of timeless energy of which all of us are a part. Life is simply a temporary incarnation of this eternal field of consciousness, whose properties, he says, include: “The field works as a whole. It correlates distant events instantly. It remembers all events. It exists beyond time and space. It creates entirely within itself. Its creation grows and expands in an evolutionary direction. It is conscious.” Chopra says that what the rishis discovered long ago is consistent with the findings of modern science: “The field of consciousness is primary to every phenomenon in Nature because of the gap that exists between every electron, every thought, every instant in time. The gap is the reference point, the stillness at the heart of creation, where the universe correlates all events.”
In Chopra’s theory of the afterlife, birth and death are merely transitions to and from different manifestations of consciousness. “Without death there can be no present moment, for the last moment has to die to make the next one possible.” Thus, he deduces, “We live in an endlessly re-created universe.” There is no need to fear death, because “Death isn’t about what I possess but about what I can become. Today I see myself as a child of time, but I may become a child of eternity.” Finally, Chopra concludes, “We move from one world to another, we shed our old identity to experience ‘I am,’ the identity of the soul, and we assemble the ingredients of a completely unique life in our next body.” Chicken soup for the New Age soul.
Reality Check: What Science Really Says
Okay, back to earth. Here is the reality. It has been estimated that in the last 50,000 years about 106 billion humans were born. Of the 100 billion people born before the six billion living today, every one of them has died and not one has returned to confirm for us beyond a reasonable doubt that there is life after death. This data set does not bode well for promises of immortality and claims for an afterlife. But let’s review them one by one.
Near Death Experiences and Altered States of Consciousness
Five centuries ago demons haunted our world, with incubi and succubi tormenting their victims as they lay asleep in their beds. Two centuries ago spirits haunted our world, with ghosts and ghouls harassing their sufferers all hours of the night. Last century aliens haunted our world, with grays and greens abducting captives out of their beds and whisking them away for probing and prodding. Today people are experiencing near-death and out-of-body experiences, floating above their bodies, out of their bedrooms, and even off the planet into space.
What is going on here? Are these elusive creatures and mysterious phenomena in our world or in our minds? New evidence indicates that they are, in fact, a product of the brain. Neuroscientist Michael Persinger, in his laboratory at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada, for example, can induce all of these experiences in subjects by subjecting their temporal lobes to patterns of magnetic fields. I tried it and had a mild out-of-body experience.
Similarly, the September 19, 2002 issue of Nature, reported that the Swiss neuroscientist Olaf Blanke and his colleagues discovered that they could bring about out-of-body experiences (OBEs) through electrical stimulation of the right angular gyrus in the temporal lobe of a 43-year old woman suffering from severe epileptic seizures. In initial mild stimulations she reported “sinking into the bed” or “falling from a height.” More intense stimulation led her to “see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk.” Another stimulation induced “an instantaneous feeling of ‘lightness’ and ‘floating’ about two meters above the bed, close to the ceiling.”
In a related study reported in the 2001 book Why God Won’t Go Away, researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili found that when Buddhist monks meditate and Franciscan nuns pray their brain scans indicate strikingly low activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe, a region of the brain the authors have dubbed the Orientation Association Area (OAA), whose job it is to orient the body in physical space (people with damage to this area have a difficult time negotiating their way around a house). When the OAA is booted up and running smoothly there is a sharp distinction between self and non-self. When OAA is in sleep mode — as in deep meditation and prayer — that division breaks down, leading to a blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy, between feeling in body and out of body. Perhaps this is what happens to monks who experience a sense of oneness with the universe, or with nuns who feel the presence of God, or with alien abductees floating out of their beds up to the mother ship.
Sometimes trauma can trigger such experiences. The December 2001 issue of Lancet published a Dutch study in which of 344 cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death, 12 percent reported near-death experiences (NDEs), where they floated above their bodies and saw a light at the end of a tunnel. Some even described speaking to dead relatives.
The general explanation for all of these phenomena is that since our normal experience is of stimuli coming into the brain from the outside, when a part of the brain abnormally generates these illusions, another part of the brain interprets them as external events. Hence, the abnormal is thought to be the paranormal. In reality, it is just brain chemistry.
More specifically, NDEs and OBEs have biochemical correlates. We know, for example, that the hallucination of flying is triggered by atropine and other belladonna alkaloids, some of which are found in mandrake or jimson weed and were used by European witches and American Indian shamans. OBEs are easily induced by dissociative anesthetics such as the ketamines. DMT (dimethyl-tryptamine) causes the feeling of the world enlarging or shrinking. MDA (methylenedioxyamphetamine) stimulates the feeling of age regression where things we have long forgotten are brought back to memory. And, of course, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) triggers visual and auditory hallucinations and gives a feeling of oneness with the cosmos, among other effects. The fact that there are receptor sites in the brain for such artificially processed chemicals, means that there are naturally produced chemicals in the brain which, under certain conditions (the stress of trauma or an accident, for example) can induce any or all of the feelings typically described in a NDE. Thus, NDEs and OBEs are forms of wild “trips” induced by the extreme trauma of almost dying.
Psychologist and paranormal researcher Susan Blackmore has taken the hallucination hypothesis one step further by demonstrating why different people would experience similar effects, such as the tunnel. The visual cortex on the back of the brain is where information from the retina is processed. Hallucinogenic drugs and lack of oxygen to the brain (such as sometimes occurs near death) can interfere with the normal rate of firing by nerve cells in this area. When this occurs, “stripes” of neuronal activity move across the visual cortex, which is interpreted by the brain as concentric rings or spirals. These spirals may be “seen” as a tunnel. Similarly, in the OBE the experience of visualizing things from above is actually just an extension of a normal process we all do called “decentering” — picture yourself sitting on the beach or climbing a mountain and it will usually be from above looking down.
These studies are evidence that mind and brain are one. All experience is mediated by the brain. Large brain areas like the cortex coordinate imputes from smaller brain areas such as the temporal lobes, which themselves collate neural events from still smaller brain modules like the angular gyrus. This reduction continues all the way down to the single neuron level, where highly-selective neurons, sometimes described as “grandmother” neurons, fire only when subjects see someone they know. Caltech neuroscientists Christof Koch and Gabriel Kreiman, in conjunction with UCLA neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried, have even found a single neuron that fires when the subject is shown a photograph of Bill Clinton. The Monica neuron must be closely connected.
The search for the neural correlates of consciousness begin at this fundamental level, and then we ratchet up from there, as we look for emergent properties of complex systems of thought that arise from these simpler systems of neuronal connections. Of course, we are not aware of the workings of our own electrochemical systems. What we actually experience is what philosophers call qualia, or subjective states of thoughts and feelings that arise from a concatenation of neural events. But eventually even the grand mystery of consciousness will be solved by the penetrating tools of science.
This is the fate of the paranormal and the supernatural — to be subsumed into the normal and the natural. In fact, there is no paranormal or supernatural; there is only the normal and the natural … and mysteries yet to be explained.
ESP and Evidence of Mind
For over a century claims have been made for the existence of psi, or psychic phenomena. In the late 19th century, organizations like the Society for Psychical Research were founded to employ rigorous scientific methods in the study of psi, and they had many world-class scientists in support. In the 20th century, psi periodically found its way into serious academic research programs, from Joseph Rhine’s Duke University experiments in the 1920s to Daryl Bem’s Cornell University research in the 1990s.
In January 1994, for example, Bem and his late University of Edinburgh parapsychologist colleague Charles Honorton published “Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer” in the prestigious review journal Psychological Bulletin. Conducting a meta-analysis of 40 published experiments, the authors concluded: “the replication rates and effect sizes achieved by one particular experimental method, the ganzfeld procedure, are now sufficient to warrant bringing this body of data to the attention of the wider psychological community.” (A meta-analysis is a statistical technique that combines the results from many studies to look for an overall effect, even if the results from the individual studies were insignificant; the ganzfeld procedure places the “receiver” in a sensory isolation room with ping pong ball halves covering the eyes, headphones playing white noise over the ears, and the “sender” in another room psychically transmitting photographic or video images.)
Despite finding evidence for psi (subjects had a hit rate of 35 percent when 25 percent was expected by chance), Bem and Honorton lamented: “Most academic psychologists do not yet accept the existence of psi, anomalous processes of information or energy transfer (such as telepathy or other forms of extrasensory perception) that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms.”
Why don’t scientists accept psi? Daryl Bem has a stellar reputation as a rigorous experimentalist and he has presented us with statistically significant results. Aren’t scientists supposed to be open to changing their minds when presented with new data and evidence? The reason for skepticism is that we need both replicable data and a viable theory, both of which are missing in psi research.
Data. Both the meta-analysis and ganzfeld techniques have been challenged. Ray Hyman from the University of Oregon found inconsistencies in the experimental procedures used in different ganzfeld experiments (that were lumped together in Bem’s meta-analysis as if they used the same procedures), and that the statistical test employed (Stouffer’s Z) was inappropriate for such a diverse data set. He also found flaws in the target randomization process (the sequence the visual targets were sent to the receiver), resulting in a target selection bias: “All of the significant hitting was done on the second or later appearance of a target. If we examined the guesses against just the first occurrences of targets, the result is consistent with chance.” Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire conducted a meta-analysis of 30 more ganzfeld experiments and found no evidence for psi, concluding that psi data are non-replicable. Bem countered with 10 additional ganzfeld experiments he claims are significant, and he has additional research he plans to publish. And so it goes … with more to come in the data debate.
Theory. The deeper reason scientists remain skeptical of psi — and will even if more significant data are published — is that there is no explanatory theory for how psi works. Until psi proponents can explain how thoughts generated by neurons in the sender’s brain can pass through the skull and into the brain of the receiver, skepticism is the appropriate response. If the data shows that there is such a phenomena as psi that needs explaining (and I am not convinced that it does), then we still need a causal mechanism.
Quantum Consciousness
Deepak Chopra and others will counter that there is, in fact, a perfectly cogent theory of psi, and that is quantum consciousness, which was recently featured in the wildly popular and improbably-named film, What the #@*! Do We Know?! Artfully edited and featuring actress Marlee Matlin as a dreamy-eyed photographer trying to make sense of an apparently senseless universe, the film’s central tenet is that we create our own reality through consciousness and quantum mechanics. I met the producers of the film the weekend it opened when we were both on a Portland, Oregon television show, so I got an early screening. I never imagined that a film on consciousness and quantum mechanics would succeed, but it has grossed millions and a created cult following.
The film’s avatars are scientists with strong New Age leanings, whose jargon-laden sound bites amount to little more than what Caltech physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann once described as “quantum flapdoodle.” University of Oregon quantum physicist Amit Goswami, for example, says: “The material world around us is nothing but possible movements of consciousness. I am choosing moment by moment my experience. Heisenberg said atoms are not things, only tendencies.” Okay, Amit, I challenge you to leap out of a 20-story building and consciously choose the experience of passing safely through the ground’s tendencies.
The work of a Japanese researcher Masura Emoto, author of The Message of Water, is featured to show how thoughts change the structure of ice crystals — beautiful crystals form in a glass of water with the word “love” taped to it, whereas playing Elvis’s “Heartbreak Hotel” causes a crystal to split into two. Would his “Burnin’ Love” boil water?
The film’s nadir is an interview with “Ramtha,” a 35,000-year-old spirit channeled by a 58-year-old woman named J. Z. Knight. I wondered where humans spoke English with an Indian accent 35,000 years ago. Many of the films’ producers, writers, and actors are members of Ramtha’s “School of Enlightenment,” where New Age pabulum is dispensed in costly weekend retreats.
The attempt to link the weirdness of the quantum world (such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that the more precisely you know a particle’s position, the less precisely you know its speed, and vice versa) to mysteries of the macro world (such as consciousness) is not new. The best candidate to connect the two comes from physicist Roger Penrose and physician Stuart Hameroff, whose theory of quantum consciousness has generated much heat but little light in scientific circles.
Inside our neurons are tiny hollow microtubules that act like structural scaffolding. The conjecture (and that’s all it is) is that something inside the microtubules may initiate a wave function collapse that leads to the quantum coherence of atoms, causing neurotransmitters to be released into the synapses between neurons and thus triggering them to fire in a uniform pattern, thereby creating thought and consciousness. Since a wave function collapse can only come about when an atom is “observed” (i.e., affected in any way by something else), neuroscientist Sir John Eccles, another proponent of the idea, even suggests that “mind” may be the observer in a recursive loop from atoms to molecules to neurons to thought to consciousness to mind to atoms….
In reality, the gap between sub-atomic quantum effects and large-scale macro systems is too large to bridge. In his book The Unconscious Quantum, the University of Colorado particle physicist Victor Stenger demonstrates that for a system to be described quantum mechanically the system’s typical mass m, speed v, and distance d must be on the order of Planck’s constant h. “If mvd is much greater than h, then the system probably can be treated classically.” Stenger computes that the mass of neural transmitter molecules, and their speed across the distance of the synapse, are about three orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be influential. There is no micro-macro connection. Subatomic particles may be altered when they are observed, but the moon is there even if no one looks at it. So what the #$*! is going on here?
Physics envy. The history of science is littered with the failed pipedreams of ever-alluring reductionist schemes to explain the inner workings of the mind — schemes increasingly set forth in the ambitious wake of Descartes’ own famous attempt, some four centuries years ago, to reduce all mental functioning to the actions of swirling vortices of atoms, supposedly dancing their way to consciousness. Such Cartesian dreams provide a sense of certainty, but they quickly fade in the face of the complexities of biology. We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization. Biology envy.
Psychic Mediumship and Talking to the Dead
Deepak Chopra recounts his experience of participating in a university study of three psychics who claimed that they could communicate with those who had already “passed over” to the other side. Even though none of the psychics were told that Deepak was present, two of them identified him by name, two of them told him that he wanted to contact his recently deceased father, and one knew his childhood nickname in Hindi. He declared it a genuine experience, even while admitting that he had his doubts, especially since “My ‘father’ knew things I knew, but nothing more.”
That is more skepticism than most people muster, especially in emotion-laden readings that promise people a connection to a lost loved one. How do psychics appear to talk to the dead? I have written about this extensively, but in short, it’s a trick that involves utilizing two techniques:
Cold Reading, where you literally “read” someone “cold,” knowing nothing about them. You ask lots of questions and make numerous statements and see what sticks. “I’m getting a P name. Who is this please?” “He’s showing me something red. What is this please?” And so on. Most statements are wrong. But as B.F. Skinner showed in his experiments on superstitious behavior, subjects only need an occasional reinforcement to be convinced there is a real pattern (slot machines need only pay off infrequently to keep people involved). In an exposé I did on psychic medium John Edward for WABC New York, for example, we counted about one statement per second in the opening minute, as he riffled through names, dates, colors, diseases, conditions, situations, relatives, keepsakes, and the like. It goes so fast that you have to stop tape and go back to catch them all. His hit rate was below 10 percent, but those handful of hits were all his subjects needed to feel that they had made contact with a loved one.
Warm Reading utilizes known principles of psychology that apply to nearly everyone. The British mentalist and magician Ian Rowland’s insightful and encyclopedic book on how to do psychic readings, The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading, provides a list of high probability guesses, including identifying such items found in most homes that are sure to convince the mark that their loved one is in the room: A box of old photographs, some in albums, most not in albums; old medicine or medical supplies out of date; toys, books, mementoes from childhood; jewelry from a deceased family member; pack of cards, maybe a card missing; electronic gadget that no longer works; notepad or message board with missing matching pen; out of date note on fridge or near the phone; books about a hobby no longer pursued; out of date calendar; drawer that is stuck or doesn’t slide properly; keys that you can’t remember what they go to; watch or clock that no longer works. Here are some common peculiarities about people that are bound to give the impression that something paranormal is at work: Scar on knee; the number 2 in the home address; childhood accident involving water; clothing never worn; photos of loved ones in wallet or purse; wore hair long as a child, then shorter haircut; one earring with a missing match, and so forth. Mediums such as James Van Praagh, Sylvia Browne, Rosemary Altea and others on whom I have conducted extensive investigations are also facile at determining the cause of death by focusing either on the chest or head areas, and then exploring whether it was a slow or sudden end. They work their way through the half dozen major causes of death in rapid-fire manner. “He’s telling me there was a pain in the chest.” If they get a positive nod, they continue. “Did he have cancer, please? Because I’m seeing a slow death here.” If they get the nod, they take credit for the hit. If the subject hesitates, they will quickly shift to heart attack. If it is the head, they go for stroke or head injury from an automobile accident or fall.
I played a psychic for a day for a television special and found it remarkably easy to convince my subjects that I was really talking to the dead. Of course, anyone can talk to the dead. The hard part is getting the dead to talk back. Psychic mediums use trickery to give the illusion that the dead are communicating with us, and because people who come to mediums for help are emotionally fragile, they are also vulnerable to such effectual methods.
Prayer and Healing Studies
In April, 2006, The American Heart Journal published the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the effects of intercessory prayer on the health and recovery of patients. Directed by Harvard University Medical School cardiologist Herbert Benson, a long-time proponent of the salubrious effects of prayer, and partially funded by the Templeton Foundation, known for its support of research linking science and religion, the findings were eagerly awaited by members of both communities. There were a total of 1,802 patients from six U.S. hospitals that were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: 604 received intercessory prayer and were told that they may or may not receive prayer; 597 did not receive intercessory prayer and were also told that they may or may not receive prayer; and 601 received intercessory prayer and were told they would receive prayer. Prayers began the night before the surgery and continued daily for two weeks after. The prayers were allowed to pray in the manner of their choice, but they were instructed to ask “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.”
The results were unequivocal: there were no statistically significant differences between any of the groups. Prayer did not work. Worse, there were slight elevated complications (although not statistically significant) for the patients in the group who knew that they were being prayed for — a “nocebo” effect. Case closed.
As for previous studies in which the positive effects of prayer were claimed, there were numerous methodological problems with all of them, including:
Lack of Controls. Many of these studies failed to control for such intervening variables as age, sex, education, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, marital standing, degree of religiosity, and the fact that most religions have sanctions against such insalubrious behaviors as sexual promiscuity, alcohol and drug abuse, and smoking. When such variables are controlled for, the formerly significant results disappear. One study on recovery from hip surgery in elderly women failed to control for age; another study on church attendance and illness recovery did not consider that people in poorer health are less likely to attend church; a related study failed to control for levels of exercise.
Outcome differences. In one of the most highly publicized studies of cardiac patients prayed for by born-again Christians, 29 outcome variables were measured but on only six did the prayed-for group show improvement. In related studies, different outcome measures were significant. To be meaningful, the same measures need to be significant across studies, because if enough outcomes are measured some will show significant correlations by chance.
File-drawer problem. In several studies on the relationship between religiosity and mortality (religious people allegedly live longer), a number of religious variables were used, but only those with significant correlations were reported. Meanwhile, other studies using the same religiosity variables found different correlations and, of course, only reported those. The rest were filed away in the drawer of non-significant findings. When all variables are factored in together, religiosity and mortality show no relationship.
Operational definitions. When experimenting on the effects of prayer, what, precisely, is being studied? For example, what type of prayer is being employed? (Are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, and Shaman prayers equal?) Who or what is being prayed to? (Are God, Jesus, and a universal life force equivalent?) What is the length and frequency of the prayer? (Are two 10-minute prayers equal to one 20-minute prayer?) How many people are praying and does their status in the religion matter? (Is one priestly prayer identical to ten parishioner prayers?) Most prayer studies either lack such operational definitions, or there is no consistency across studies in such definitions.
Theological difficulties. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He should not need to be reminded or inveigled that someone needs healing. And what about all those patients who were prayed for and died? Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion.
Information Fields, Morphic Resonance,
and the Universal Life Force
Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to do a newspaper crossword puzzle later in the day? Me neither. But according to Rupert Sheldrake it is because the collective wisdom of the morning successes resonates throughout the cultural morphic field. In Sheldrake’s theory of “morphic resonance,” similar forms (morphs, or “fields of information”) reverberate and exchange information within a universal life force. “As time goes on, each type of organism forms a special kind of cumulative collective memory,” Sheldrake writes in his 1981 book A New Science of Life. “The regularities of nature are therefore habitual. Things are as they are because they were as they were.”
Morphic resonance, says Sheldrake, is “the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species,” and explains phantom limbs, homing pigeons, how dogs know when their owners are coming home, and such psychic phenomena as how people know when someone is staring at them. “Vision may involve a two-way process, an inward movement of light and an outward projection of mental images,” Sheldrake explains. Thousands of trials conducted by anyone who downloaded the experimental protocol from Sheldrake’s Web page “have given positive, repeatable, and highly significant results, implying that there is indeed a widespread sensitivity to being stared at from behind.”
Let’s examine this claim more closely. First, science is not normally conducted by strangers who happen upon a Web page protocol, so we have no way of knowing if these amateurs controlled for intervening variables and experimenter biases. Second, psychologists dismiss anecdotal accounts of this sense to a reverse self-fulfilling effect: a person suspects being stared at and turns to check; such head movement catches the eyes of would-be starers, who then turn to look at the staree, who thereby confirms the feeling of being stared at. Third, in 2000 John Colwell from Middlesex University, London, conducted a formal test utilizing Sheldrake’s suggested experimental protocol, with 12 volunteers who participated in 12 sequences of 20 stare or no-stare trials each, with accuracy feedback provided for the final nine sessions. Results: subjects were able to detect being stared at only when accuracy feedback was provided, which Colwell attributed to the subjects learning what was, in fact, a nonrandom presentation of the experimental trials. When the University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman also attempted to replicate Sheldrake’s research, he found that subjects detected stares at rates no better than chance. Fourth, there is an experimenter bias problem. Institute of Noetic Sciences’ researcher Marilyn Schlitz (a believer in psi) collaborated with Wiseman (a skeptic of psi) in replicating Sheldrake’s research, and discovered that when they did the staring Schlitz found statistically significant results, whereas Wiseman found chance results.
Sheldrake responds that skeptics dampen the morphic field’s subtle power, whereas believers enhance it. Of Wiseman, Sheldrake remarked: “Perhaps his negative expectations consciously or unconsciously influenced the way he looked at the subjects.”
Perhaps, but how can we tell the difference between negative-psi and non-psi? As it is said, the invisible and the nonexistent look the same.
Middle Land
So where does this leave us? I am, by temperament, a sanguine person, so I really hate to douse the flame of that doubtful future date with the cold water of skepticism in this present state. But I care what is actually true even more than what I hope is true, and these are the facts as I understand them to be.
I want to believe Messrs. Chopra, Bem, Goswami, Sheldrake, and the others. Really I do. I gave up on religion in graduate school, but I often catch myself slipping back into my former evangelical fervor now directed toward the wonders of science and nature. But this is precisely why I am skeptical. What they offer is too much like religion: it promises everything, delivers nothing (but hope), and is almost entirely based on faith, the very antithesis of science.
I am especially skeptical whenever people argue that the Next Big Thing will save us, in our lifetime, and fulfills our deepest emotional needs. Evangelicals never claim that the Second Coming is going to happen in the next generation (or that they will be “left behind” while others are saved). Likewise, secular doomsayers typically predict the demise of civilization within their allotted time (and, of course, that they will be part of the small surviving enclave). In parallel, prognosticators of both religious and secular utopias always include themselves as members of the chosen few, and paradise is always within reach.
Where is paradise? It is here. It is now. It is within us and without us. It is in our thoughts and in our actions. It is in our lives and in our loves. It is in our families and in our friends. It is in our communities and in our world. It is in the courage of our convictions and in the character of our souls.
Hope springs eternal, even if life is not.
photo of Deepak Chopra by Jeremiah Sullivan
Taking the Afterlife Seriously
by Deepak Chopra
“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the power of all true science.”
–Albert Einstein
I. Thanks for Coming — or Did You Even Show Up?
I have put Michael Shermer at a disadvantage by writing a book that bases the afterlife on the survival of consciousness. He has little interest in consciousness compared to his interest in laboratory-induced hallucinations and altered states. It’s a shame that he doesn’t grasp that the afterlife is about nothing but consciousness. (I don’t offhand know anyone who took their bodies with them.) Shermer’s focus on God is irrelevant to the argument. I give seven versions of life after death in my book, collected from every religious and philosophical tradition. He fails to address them or to realize that certain traditions (Platonism, Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta) do not posit a personal God.
Shermer’s retelling of the flaws in prayer studies is germane to my argument but only to a small degree — it by no means forms a sixth of my book, more like three pages. I must point out, however, that the 2006 Benson-Harvard refutation of prayer is far from being authoritative. Critics have found methodological flaws in it, and there are 19 other studies in the field that arrive at differing results, 11 of them showing that “prayer works.” Now to the holes in Shermer’s own approach. It may be curious that stimulating some area of the brain can induce out-of-body experiences or the feeling of sinking into a bed, or that Buddhist monks have low activity in their Orientation Association Area (OAA), as cited by Shermer. Unfortunately, these experiments have little bearing on the afterlife. Induced states are quite feeble as science. I can put a tourniquet on a person’s arm, depriving the nerves of blood flow, and thereby eliminate the sensation of touch. This doesn’t prove that quadriplegics with paralyzed limbs aren’t having a real experience. I can induce happiness by giving someone a glass of wine and having a pretty girl flirt with him. That doesn’t prove that happiness without alcohol isn’t real. The point is that a simulation isn’t the real thing or a credible stand-in for it.
Shermer doesn’t adhere to the scientific impartiality he so vocally espouses. Loading the dice turns out to be fairly standard for him. For example, he cites the December 2001 issue of Lancet that published a Dutch study in which, out of 344 cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death, 12 percent reported near-death experiences. (The actual figure was 18 percent, by the way.) Immediately he skips on to say that near-death experiences can be induced in the laboratory. Hold on a minute. Did Shermer miss the point entirely? The patients in the Dutch study, who suffered massive heart attacks in the hospital, had their near-death experiences when there was no measurable activity in the brain, when they were in fact brain dead. Did he quote the astonishment of Dr. Pin van Lommel, the Dutch cardiologist who observed this effect? No. Did he go into the baffling issue of why the vast majority of resuscitated patients (over 80 percent) don’t report near-death experiences? That’s pretty important if you are claiming that all this near-death hokum can be induced in the lab with a few electrodes.
Leaving out the heart of the matter, as Shermer does, smacks of unfairness, for I rely on this same Dutch study and give all the particulars. Skepticism is only credible when it’s not being devious. But Shermer often deliberately misses the point. I cite a University of Virginia study that to date has found over 2,000 children who vividly remember their past lives. In many cases they can name places and dates. The facts they relate have been verified in many cases. Even more astonishing, over 200 of these children exhibit birthmarks that resemble the way they remember dying in their most recent lifetime. (One boy, for example, recalled being killed with a shotgun, and his chest exhibited a scatter-shot of red birthmarks). Unable to refute this phenomenon or imagine a counter-study, Shermer fails to mention it. He snipes at the easy targets to bolster his blanket skepticism. I wish Shermer realized that true skepticism suspends both belief and disbelief. Being a debunker of curiosity is something science doesn’t need.
This points to a broader problem with his arguments: the problem of dueling results. Let’s say a skeptic offers in evidence a study that asks five children to describe a previous incarnation, and let’s say that only those who are coached, either by parents or researchers, come up with such stories. Has skepticism refuted the original research? Of course it hasn’t. The first study stands on its own, by sheer force of numbers, demanding explanation. But by Shermer’s logic if some children don’t remember a past lifetime, those who do must be categorically dismissed. By analogy, if I study twenty mothers who smile when shown their baby’s picture, anyone can find twenty others (suffering from post-partum depression, for example) who don’t. But that doesn’t prove that mothers don’t love their babies. The second experiment is an anomaly.
No doubt Shermer will want to lecture me on the need for replication in science. Yet this is the very thing he conveniently ignores. Studies on near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, memories of past lifetimes, remote viewing, and so forth — all crucial to the reality of life after death — have been well replicated. Shermer finds one study that induces similar states (“similar” being a very tricky word here) and he walks away satisfied. He already knows a priori that “paranormal” findings must be false, so why bother to engage them seriously? Extending our understanding of normal doesn’t interest him.
The focus of science should be on the survival of consciousness after death, not on the sideshow of fraud, pseudoscience, religious dogma, and the other straw men Shermer knocks down. For example, I rely a great deal on the possibility that mind extends outside the body. This is obviously crucial, since with the death of the brain, our minds can only survive if they don’t depend on the brain.
There are astonishing results in this area. One of the most famous, performed at the engineering department at Princeton and validated many times over, asked ordinary people to sit in the room with a random number generator. As the machine printed out a random series of 0s and 1s, the subjects were instructed to try to make it produce more zeroes. They didn’t touch the machine but only willed it to deviate from randomness. Did they succeed? Absolutely. Did other identical or similar experiments succeed? Over and over. Does Shermer even touch on this matter, so crucial to my argument? No.
He displays an amazing ability to avoid the important stuff. He writes, for example, “The ultimate fallacy of all such prayer and healing research is theological: If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He should not need to be reminded or inveigled that someone needs healing.” This is simplistic theology at best second-guessing an omniscient and omnipresent God is a tautology by definition, since such a God, being everywhere and performing all acts, makes no choices at all. Such a consciousness encompasses good and bad, disease and health, equally. (As much as possible I avoid using a personal pronoun for God, but it’s awkward since “It” doesn’t work in English. I am referring to a God that is closer to a universal field than anything else we can imagine.) Does an omnipotent God even need a creation to begin with? The question is logically unanswerable. Fortunately, Shermer’s Sunday School God, a patriarch with a white beard sitting above the clouds, plays no role in my argument — or in the traditions of Buddhism, Vedanta, etc. mentioned at the outset. Did my book defend the Judeo-Christian God? Did it argue for a physical place called heaven (or hell)? Did I praise the joys of the hereafter in order to denigrate life here on earth? Not for a moment. I specifically rooted the afterlife in ordinary states of consciousness that no one doubts, such as dream, imagination, projection, myth, metaphor, meditation, and other aspects of awareness that give us clues about the workings of the mind overall. Shermer doesn’t engage those connections, either.
Since he often lumps me in with other authors whom he disdains and treats cavalierly, I can only assume that he uses the same slipshod reasoning on them, too. I certainly know for a fact that Shermer misrepresents and distorts the groundbreaking work of Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist who graduated with first-class honors from Cambridge and whose curriculum vitae (not to mention acumen, curiosity, and intelligence) a gaggle of skeptics can only envy.
But let’s concede that Shermer knows he’s preaching to the choir and can afford all this rhetorical by-your-leave. His review hasn’t actually offered anything beyond a self-indulgent expansion on his first sentence, borrowed from a bumper sticker: I DON’T KNOW AND YOU DON’T EITHER. He takes this to be humorous; in fact it is distressingly dogmatic. Is he so proud of his skepticism that literally he can tell what someone else doesn’t know? Without dragging him into philosophical deep waters, I must point out that dismissing opposing views even before they are stated seems like fairly spooky solipsism.
In the end, debating tactics offer entertainment value but are a dubious way to get at truth. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that the true test of any scientific or philosophical system is how much it can explain. I believe that Shermer sincerely agrees with this, despite his often unfair tactics and his condescension to spirituality in general. The old-fashioned materialism that underlies his opinions stands in stark contrast to quantum physics, which long ago opened up an unseen world where linear cause-and-effect no longer operates, where intuition has made more breakthroughs than logic. Virtual reality, populated with virtual photons and subatomic interactions that operate beyond the speed of light — a realm where events are instantaneously coordinated across billions of light years — is the foundation of our physical world. Pace Shermer, the possibility of intelligence and consciousness in the universe is completely viable; we must arrive at new theories to account for life after death (among many other mysteries) by opening ourselves to the origins of our own consciousness. It’s all very well to watch various parts of the brain light up on an MRI, but to claim that this is true knowledge of the mind is like putting a stethoscope to the roof of the Astrodome and claiming that you understand the rules of football.
If Shermer wants to have a serious debate about the persistence of consciousness after physical death, I eagerly invite it. But I must in all candor ask him to look at consciousness first. He hasn’t made the slightest effort so far, and yet that was the entire subject of my book.
II. Science and the Afterlife
To catalog how much Shermer gets wrong isn’t the same as proving that the afterlife is real. But the proofs that it isn’t are not very sound. Hamlet refers to death as “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.” For all intents and purposes, this argument has sufficed for materialists ever since. But people do cross the boundary between life and death only to return — the number of near-death experiences is many thousands by now. (For anyone who wants an in-depth exposure to the phenomenon, see www.near-death.com. Contrary to what Shermer claims, these aren’t artifacts of an oxygen-deprived brain; they are meaningful experiences full of detail and coherence, and often they appear after the brain ceases all activity. The existence of studies in which people do not have such experiences seems irrelevant. I can offer experiments where people can’t identify the notes of the musical scale, but that doesn’t mean perfect pitch is an illusion.
I was particularly interested in the resemblance between modern near-death experiences and those reported for hundreds of years in Tibet. People who return from the dead in that culture are known as delogs, and what they experience isn’t a Christian heaven or hell — in this country 90 percent of near-death experiences, by the way, are positive — but the complex layers of the Buddhist Bardo. In our society heaven is generally reported by those who have near-death experiences as being like green pastures or blue skies; children tend to report a child’s heaven populated by scampering lambs and other baby animals.
This made me realize that Hamlet was right to call death an undiscovered country, not because the living cannot reach it but because heaven’s geography keeps shifting. If we look at how various cultures perceive the afterlife, there are roughly seven categories:
Paradise: Your soul finds itself in a perfected world surrounding God. You go to Paradise as a reward and never leave. (If you are bad, you go to Satan’s home and never leave it.)
The Godhead: Your soul returns to God, but not in any particular place. You discover the location of God as a timeless state infused with his presence
The Spirit World: Your soul rests in a realm of departed spirits. You are drawn back to those you loved in this life. Or you rejoin your ancestors, who are gathered with the great Spirit.
Transcendence: Your soul performs a vanishing act in which a person dissolves, either quickly or gradually. The pure soul rejoins the sea of consciousness from which it was born.
Transmigration (or Metempsychosis): Your soul is caught in the cycle of rebirth. Depending on one’s karma, each soul rises or falls from lower to higher life forms — and even may be reborn in objects. The cycle continues eternally until your soul escapes through higher realization.
Awakening: Your soul arrives in the light. You see with complete clarity for the first time, realizing the truth of existence that was masked by being in a physical body.
Dissolution: Eternity is nothingness. As the chemical components of your body return to basic atoms and molecules, the consciousness created by the brain disappears completely. You are no more.
There is no common denominator here except one: consciousness itself. We have to shift our notion of the afterlife from being a place to being a state of awareness. Once we do that, life after death becomes much more plausible. Instead of arguing over religious beliefs, we can ask rational questions:
Can consciousness survive the body’s death?
Is there mind outside the brain?
Can we know the states of consciousness that belong to the afterlife without dying?
Does consciousness have a basis outside time and space?
To me these are rational questions, and we can devise experiments to answer them. But before going into that, the issue most people want to settle is “What happens after we die?” Since this remains such a pressing question, let me offer the evidence that surfaced when I looked at cultures East and West. Leaving aside the place a person might go to (my position is that there is no “where” after death; everything is projected in consciousness, including heaven and hell), the afterlife appears to unfold in the following stages:
The physical body stops functioning. The dying person may not be aware of this but eventually knows that it has occurred.
The physical world vanishes. This can happen by degrees; there can be a sense of floating upward or of looking down on familiar places as they recede.
The dying person feels lighter, suddenly freed of limitation.
The mind and sometimes the senses continue to operate. Gradually, however, what is perceived is non-physical.
A presence grows that is felt to be divine. This presence can be clothed in a light or in the body of angels or gods. The presence can communicate to the dying person.
Personality and memory begin to fade, but the sense of “I” remains.
This “I” has an overwhelming sense of moving on to another phase of existence.
As much as possible I have eliminated religious wording here because the persistence of consciousness has to be universal. It can’t depend on specific beliefs, which change over time and from place to place. (When he dies, Michael Shermer will be relieved to survive, but perhaps he will be disappointed that his long service to fundamental Christianity in youth, followed by long service to skepticism, won’t give him a special place in heaven. Nor will it lock the gates against him.)
Right now there are many reasons why science is reluctant to test any of these propositions about the survival of consciousness. First and foremost is the ideology of materialism. Shermer stands in for thousands of actual scientists who see the world entirely in material terms. For them, consciousness is as alien as the soul. Both are invisible, immaterial, and unmeasurable and therefore ipso facto unreal. By these standards virtual photons should also be unreal, but they aren’t (not that Shermer has bothered to become conversant with quantum physics). Other reasons include peer pressure — i.e., ridicule — even when a researcher is brilliant and scrupulous to the nth degree. Lack of funding is a problem, naturally, and above all there is the time-honored antithesis between science and religion. In an either/or world, it’s hard to convince the religionists that rationality has a spiritual place or the scientists that your research isn’t just a stalking horse for the Bible — see the recent social debate over Intelligent Design where neither side was willing to see the slightest merit in the other.
None of these obstacles, however, has proven insurmountable. Let me offer some highlights in the research devoted to answering the most crucial questions about the possibility of life after death:
Mind Over Matter
My core argument is based on consciousness being a field, like matter and energy fields, that we are all imbedded in, whether here and now or after death. It would help us greatly if our minds could alter the field. Then we would have a link between the two models of mind and matter. Such a link was provided by Helmut Schmidt, a researcher working for Boeing’s aerospace laboratory in Seattle. Beginning in the mid-Sixties, Schmidt set out to construct a series of “quantum machines” that could emit random signals, with the aim of seeing if ordinary people could alter those signals using nothing more than their minds. The first machine detected radioactive decay from Strontium-90; each electron that was given off lit up either a red, blue, yellow, or green light. Schmidt asked ordinary people to predict, with the press of a button, which light would be illuminated next.
At first no one performed better than random, or 25 percent, in picking one of the four lights. Then Schmidt it on the idea of using psychics instead, and his first results were encouraging: they guessed the correct light 27 percent of the time. But he didn’t know if this was a matter of clairvoyance — seeing the result before it happened — or something more active, actually changing the random pattern of electrons being emitted.
So he built a second machine that generated only two signals, call them plus and minus. A circle of lights was set up, and if the machine generated a plus, a light would come on in the clockwise direction while a minus would make one light up in the counter-clockwise direction. Left to itself, the machine would light up an equal number of pluses and minuses; what Schmidt wanted his subjects to do was to will the lights to move clockwise only. He found two subjects who had remarkable success. One could get the lights to move clockwise 52.5 percent of the time. An increase of 2.5 percent over randomness doesn’t sound dramatic, but Schmidt calculated that the odds were 10 million to one against the same thing occurring by chance. The other subject was just as successful, but oddly enough, he couldn’t make the lights move clockwise. Hard as he tried, they moved counter-clockwise, yet with the same deviation from randomness. Later experiments with new subjects raised the success rate to 54 percent, although the strange anomaly that the machine would go in the wrong direction, often persisted. (No explanation was ever found for this.) In effect, Schmidt was proving that an observer can change activity in the quantum field using the mind alone.
In an earlier part of this article I refer to replications of these experiments at Princeton and other laboratories. After 12 years of study, it was found that about two-thirds of ordinary people could influence the outcome of the machine, unlike in Schmidt’s study, where only talented psychics were used. After examining the results in detail in her excellent book, The Field, writer Lynne McTaggart sees a complete revolution in consciousness: “On the most profound level, the [Princeton] studies also suggest that reality is created by each of us only by our attention. At the lowest level of mind and matter, each of us creates the world.”
Remote Viewing
If someone could alter the field simply by looking at it, that would come even closer to the premise that each of us is imbedded in the field. An intriguing proof of this was provided by a machine built by physicists at Stanford called a SQUID, or superconducting quantum interference device. It’s enough for us to know that this device, which measures the possible activity of subatomic particles, specifically quarks, is very well shielded from all outside magnetic forces. This shielding begins with layers of copper and aluminum, but to insure that no outside force can affect the mechanism, exotic metals like niobium and “mu metal” wrap the inner core.
In 1972 a SQUID was installed in the basement of a laboratory at Stanford, apparently doing nothing except tracing out the same hill-and-valley S-curve on a length of graph paper. This curve represented the constant magnetic field of the earth; if a quark passed through the field the machine would register it by changes in the pattern being drawn. A young laser physicist named Hal Puthoff (later to become a noted quantum theorist) decided that aside from its main use, the SQUID would make a perfect test of psychic powers. Very few people, including the scientists at Sanford, knew the exact inner construction of the machine.
A letter Puthoff wrote in search of a psychic who would take up the challenge was responded to by Ingo Swann, a New York artist with psychic abilities. Swann was flown to California without being told in advance about either the test or the SQUID. When he first saw it, he seemed a bit distracted and baffled. But he agree to “look” inside the machine, and as he did, the S-curve on the graph paper changed pattern — something it almost never did — only to go back to its normal functioning as soon as Swann stopped paying attention to it.
A startled Puthoff asked him to repeat this, so for 45 seconds Swann concentrated upon seeing the inside of the machine, and for exactly that interval the recoding device drew a new pattern, a long plateau on the paper instead of hills and valleys. Swann then drew a sketch of what he saw as the inner workings of the SQUID, and when these were checked with an expert, they perfectly matched the actual construction. Swann was vague about whether he had changed the magnetic input that the machine was built to measure; he offered that he thought he was affecting its niobium core. But it also turned out that if he merely thought about the SQUID, not trying to change it at all, the recording device showed alterations in the surrounding magnetic field. In the years since 1972, many other experiments in remote viewing have successfully taken place.
Intelligence in Nature
If we survive death in our consciousness, we’d like to take human qualities with us, such as intelligence. Is there proof that intelligence is innate in nature? I will skip over the argument by design since it isn’t logically irrefutable and give an amusing practical example. Many dog owners will attest to the ability of a dog or cat to know what the owner is thinking. A few minutes before going on a walk, a dog gets excited and restless; on the day when a cat is going to be taken to the vet, it disappears and is nowhere to be found. These casual observations led the ingenious British researcher Rupert Sheldrake, a trained biologist now turned speculative thinker, to conduct a few controlled studies. He wanted to know if dogs and cats can actually read their owners’ minds. One study was very simple: Sheldrake phoned up 65 vets in the London area and asked them if it was common for cat owners to cancel appointments because their cats had disappeared that day. Sixty-four vets responded that it was very common, and the sixty-fifth had given up making appointments for cats because too many couldn’t be located when they were supposed to come in.
Sheldrake decided to perform an experiment using dogs. The fact that a dog gets excited when the time comes for going on a walk means little if the walk is routinely scheduled for the same time very day, or if the dog gets visual cues from its owner that he is preparing to go out. Therefore Sheldrake placed dogs in outbuildings completely isolated from their owners; he then asked the owner, at randomly selected times, to think about walking the dog five minutes before going to fetch them. In the meantime the dog was constantly videotaped in its isolated location. Sheldrake found that more than half the dogs ran to the door, waging their tails, circling restlessly, or otherwise showing anticipation of going for a walk, and they kept up this behavior until their owners appeared. No dog showed anticipatory behavior, however, when their owners were not thinking about taking them for a walk.
So far, this suggests something intriguing, that the bond between a pet and its owner could result in a subtle connection at the level of thought. Polls show that about 60 percent of Americans believe they have had a telepathic experience, so this result is not completely startling. The next leap is quite startling, however. After writing up his results with telepathic pets, Sheldrake received an email from a woman in New York City who said that her African grey parrot not only read her thoughts but responded to them with speech. The woman and her husband might be sitting in another room, out of sight from the bird, whose name is N’kisi, and if they were feeling hungry, N’kisi would suddenly say, “You want some yummy.” If the owner and her husband were thinking about going out, N’kisi might say, “You gotta go out, see ya later.”
Greatly intrigued, Sheldrake contacted the owner, an artist named Aimee Morgana. The situation he found was remarkable even without telepathy. African gray parrots are among the most linguistically talented of all birds, and N’kisi had a huge vocabulary of over 700 words. More remarkable still, he used them like human speech, not “parroting” a word mindlessly but applying it where appropriate; if he saw something that was red, he said “red,” and if the object was another color, he said that color. A decade ago this talent would have been unbelievable, until a researcher named Dr. Irene Pepperberg, after twenty years of work with her own African gray, had proved beyond a doubt that it could use language meaningfully. Now associated with MIT, Pepperberg made a breakthrough, not just in our understanding of animal intelligence, but in the possibility that mind exists outside the brain.
It was this possibility, which Sheldrake and others call “extended mind,” that N’kisi seemed to prove. Aimee had some astonishing anecdotes to relate. When she was watching a Jackie Chan movie on television, one shot showed Chan perilously perched on a girder. When the shot came on, N’kisi said, “Don’t fall down,” even though his cage was behind the television with no line of sight to the picture. When an automobile commercial came on next, N’kisi said, “That’s my car.” Another time Aimee was reading a book that had the lines, “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” and simultaneously from another room the bird said, “The color is black.”
Sheldrake wanted to confirm all of this for himself. On his first visit, Aimee gave him a taste of N’kisi’s telepathy: she looked at a picture of a girl from a magazine, and with remarkable clarity from the adjoining room the parrot said, “That’s a girl.” The next step was a formal experiment. If N’kisi could understand words and also had telepathic abilities, could the two be tested together? The experiment Sheldrake devised was quite strange if he hadn’t already seen what N’kisi could do — he proposed that Aimee would look at pictures that corresponded to words her parrot already knew. Aimee would sit in one room while N’kisi remained isolated in another. The bird would have two minutes to utter a “key word” that matched the picture. If he said the word in that time, it would count as a hit. If he didn’t say the word, or if he said it after the two minutes were up, it counted as a miss.
To insure neutrality, someone besides Aimee chose both the pictures and the key words that matched each one. (This proved unfair to the bird, actually, since the neutral chooser picked a word like “TV” that N’kisi had only said once or twice before; it didn’t utter these words at the right time during the experiment, nor did he say them at all.) After all the trials were over, the tapes of what N’kisi had said were played for three judges, who wrote down what they heard; unless N’kisi distinctly said the right word, as transcribed by all three judges, a hit wouldn’t count. The results were beyond ordinary comprehension. For example, when Aimee looked at a picture showing scantily clad bathers on a beach, N’kisi mumbled for a bit, then all three judges heard him say, “Look at my pretty naked body.” He didn’t say other, irrelevant key words; in between saying the right words twice, the bird only whistled and made vocal tones. When Aimee looked at a picture of someone talking on the telephone, N’kisi said, “What’cha doin’ on the phone?” Perhaps the most intriguing response was when Aimee concentrated on a picture of flowers. Instead of simply uttering the key word “flower,” N’kisi said, “That’s a pic of flowers.”
How did he do overall? Out of 71 trails, N’kisi got 23 hits, as compared to the 7.4 hits that would have been expected if the results were random. Sheldrake points out that this is quite a significant outcome, all the more because N’kisi wasn’t aware that he was being tested and often said the right key word after the allotted time was up. In a small Manhattan apartment another bit of proof added to mounting evidence that the mind isn’t solely human property and in fact might exist outside the brain. Communication between the animal kingdom and us has an eerie ring, but pets can’t cheat and they have no ulterior motive for proving that they are special in their abilities. India’s Vedic rishis long ago asserted that the entire universe is intelligent, because it is permeated by consciousness.
The Mind Field
If consciousness is an aspect of the field, then our brains should operate along the lines of a field. This seems to be true. For one thing, it’s impossible to explain how the brain coordinates millions of separate events simultaneously unless something like a mind field is present. Take a compass out of your pocket anywhere on earth, shake it, and a few seconds later the wobbly needle will always settle pointing north. If every person on the planet did this at exactly twelve midnight, billions of compasses would be doing the same thing simultaneously, a fact that doesn’t surprise us because we know that the Earth’s magnetic field is responsible. It would be absurd to claim that each compass decided randomly to pick north.
Yet we say that about the brain. For you to think the word “rhinoceros” and see a mental image of that animal, millions of brain cells have to act simultaneously. (We will leave aside the more difficult question of why you picked “rhinoceros” out of all the words you could have chosen, since that choice can be based on reason, emotion, nonsense, or private associations in memory. A computer can be taught to select any given word using an pre-set algorithm, but it has no ability to decide on what personal, emotional, or imaginative basis to pick words — you do.) The neurons involved in word choice don’t jumble through the alphabet to find one letter at a time; they don’t sound out an array of words one syllable at a time; nor do they leaf through a photo archive to match the right word to the right animal. Instead, the correct brain activity arises simultaneously.
Neurologists can watch various portions of the brain light up at the same time, but this is one area where subjective experience is stronger, since we all know first hand that we can utter words in any order and call up any image in our imagination. The brain is acting holistically like a field, coordinating different events at the same time, except that we know the brain isn’t literally a field. It’s an object. Fields are invisible, and their basic components are energy and information. Which sounds much more like a mind than a physical organ, however complex.
You would think that since the brain depends on electrical signals, it would be affected by the soup of radio, television, microwave, and many other electromagnetic emissions that surround us. Apparently this isn’t so, and psychic researchers have gone so far as to isolate subjects in Faraday cages that block all electromagnetic energy without altering their abilities to see at a distance or exhibit other psychic phenomena. It will be fascinating to explore the field phenomena that are subtler than electromagnetism — the afterlife could well be one of them.
Can it be that the universe is organic, holistic, and aware? I am perfectly willing to accept Shermer’s declaration that the burden of proof lies with those who claim this rather than with skeptics. But logically that’s not actually true. We cannot prove that the universe doesn’t have a mind, because we aren’t mindless. Even when we declare that atoms and molecules act mindlessly, that is a mental statement. Nobody has ever experienced mindlessness; therefore we have nothing to base it on, just as a fish has nothing but wetness to base its reality on — dryness is a theological fancy under the sea.
In the end, I realize that Shermer and I are speaking two different languages. He makes no reference to consciousness, the field, quantum mechanics, advanced neurology, or philosophy. I’d like to hear arguments from someone more up to date in these fields. It’s a strange feeling when somebody in a Model A Ford challenges you to a race when you are in a Lexus, but even stranger when he thinks he’s going to win.
Finally, Shermer adopts a word like “soul” in order to refute it when he doesn’t even understand or clarify what the soul is. Does the soul contain the total information stored in our brains? Is it a personal localization in the quantum field? Is it our connection to the realm of archetypes and myths? Information does persist, and so do archetypes. Without a doubt the electrical activity in the brain is a localization of quantum probabilities. How, then, can these phenomena be objects of serious scientific study while Shermer feels nothing but disdain for the soul? He simply assumes a Sunday School definition, and like his assumptions about God on his throne and other childish notions, it’s no wonder his arguments against life after death are scientific non-starters.
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