The Ecology of Consciousness - Part 5
James V. Hardt, Ph.D.
Biocybernaut Institute
 continued from part 4
The Future of Humanity's Consciousness
The future of humanity is a linked consciousness,
a shared awareness, overlying the ongoing individual awarenesses of
each person. Many religious rituals and practices have the ability,
when they are effective, to help their practitioners merge into a
shared awareness in which they can better and more fully apprehend the
divine mysteries. And through this merging into a shared awareness
each participant knows and experiences himself or herself more
fully. Knowing oneself is assisted by merging with one or more
others. And there is a science and a mathematics which explains why
this is so.
The aim of phenomenology is to provide a method
for disclosing the structure of consciousness, but Kurt Gödel has
informed us with his famous 1931 theorem that no logical system can
contain within itself a description of itself which is both complete
and accurate. That would seem to limit an individual's understanding
of himself and of phenomena larger than himself such as the phenomena
of man. This same theme of limitation of understanding is given in a
different way by Suzuki Roshi (1960) a Zen master who lived and taught
in America:
The dimensions of the mind can never
be delineated. ... Beyond consciousness lies the indefinable reach of
the unconscious, which stretches out beyond the bounds of individual
awareness and ... beyond individual experience.
Perhaps Strasser has the right idea with his
dialogal methods. Perhaps two minds (or many) are better than one, and
are more likely to discover the nature of human awareness. Perhaps
also the answer to our quest for growing understanding lies in linking
the awareness of several or of many people. Perhaps a way around the
limitation of Gödel's theorem can be found in linked minds of two
or more persons. If truly linked, they would constitute a system
larger and more comprehensive than an individual
consciousness. Therefore there would be no contradiction of
Gödel's theorem if the linked-mind was to fully and accurately
describe the structure of a single human consciousness, which would be
but a substructure of the linked-mind. A geometrical analogy can
clarify this point. Given the axioms and theorems of solid
(three-dimensional) geometry it is possible to deal with any subject
of plane geometry (two-dimensional). But, on the other hand, given
only the axioms and theorems of plane geometry, it is not possible to
completely and accurately describe the objects of solid geometry.
The linking of the single awarenesses of two
people which is hinted at by Brown and Klug and which would have
delighted Husserl (who was troubled by his own view of consciousness
as a "monadic interiority") is fully envisioned by Teilhard de
Chardin, who speaks of "the planetary maturation of mankind" as a
certain collective act of reflection. This is an idea which is
quite believable if we accept Teilhard's analysis of evolution and his
law of complexity-consciousness (an affirmation of the tendency of
consciousness to continually increase in complexity). In his words:
We are faced with a harmonized
collectivity of consciousness equivalent to a sort of
super-consciousness. The idea is that of the earth not only becoming
covered by myriads of grains of thought, but becoming enclosed in a
single thinking envelope so as to form, functionally, no more than a
single vast grain of thought on the sidereal scale, the plurality of
individual reflections grouping themselves together and reinforcing
one another in the act of a single unanimous reflection. This is the
general form in which, by analogy and in symmetry with the past, we
are lead scientifically to envisage the future of
mankind.
How soon this will happen may be determined by our
application of biofeedback techniques, which provide for the
objectification and thus the possible interpersonal sharing of
experience. The objectification of experience is well advanced, with
much of the evidence coming from analysis of the electrical activity
of the brain. Johnston and Chesney (1974) have found
"Electrophysiological correlates of meaning" where the evoked brain
potentials are different for the same stimulus depending on its
meaning. Begleiter and Porjesy (1975) have found evoked brain
potentials to be indicators of decision-making which encode for
specific behavior outcomes of those decisions even before the behavior
occurs; and Clynes (1971) has made a strong statement regarding our
ability to objectify and identify aspects of emotion:
It appears that for each emotion, of
the spectrum of emotions, there exists a brain algorithm that
determines a spatio-temporal form (or essentic form) common to the
expression of that emotion, regardless of the particular output
modality chosen. It has therefore been possible to standardize the
measurement of essentic form. ... Differential equations describing
these forms were found, and cross cultural and other measures were
obtained that indicate their biological origin.
In addition to reading aspects of a person's
subjective experiences of the world in his brain waves, it is also
possible to read aspects of his intentions. Low (1966) has identified
a surface negative slow electrical potential called the contingent
negative variation (CNV) which he felt indicated a state of "intent to
respond." Low, Coats, Retting, and McSherry (1967) furthered the study
of the CNV with a paper on "Anxiety, attentiveness-alertness: A
phenomenological study of the CNV" which found that intended mental or
motor responses evoke the CNV potential from surface regions whose
area is proportional to the anticipated difficulty of the
response. The more complex the intended responses, the greater will be
the areas from which the CNV can be recorded.
Evans and Mulholland (1969) maintain that the CNV
cannot be merely a priming for discharge of motor neurons and they
argue in favor of a broader interpretation. In fact we can suggest
that the CNV is the brain wave of phenomenological "intentionality."
Husserl described intentionality as a "turning to," "being involved
in," "being oriented to," "the matter being directed to," and "aiming
at." And although Tecce (1972) has cautioned that the " ... CNV is
... a heterogeneous electrical brain wave that is not entirely
reducible to simple dichotomous theoretical constructs," it is clear
that the CNV is evoked in those complex situations Husserl has chosen
to describe by application of the term "intentionality." Low,
et. al. (1967) reminds us that in all situations wherein the CNV is
generated and maintained there is the "intent" by the subject to do
something subjectively significant, whether purely mental or mental
and physical.
Phenomenologists' use of the term "intentionality"
may cover more situations than those in which the CNV is present, but
as a first approximation to stimulate research, we can consider the
CNV as a rough objective indicator of the subjective aspects of
intentionality. With the objectification of experience, which is none
other than experience translated into the form of information, all
things must change: laws and the need for them, the value of the
dollar, the value of money itself, the value of values, the strife
between science and religion, the division of humanity into nations,
even the quality of orgasms. This view is shared by Kiefer (1970):
In the physiological exploration of
so-called transcendental consciousness, there lies the greatest hope
in centuries of rebirth of a philosophical inspiration that must
finally eventuate in that union of true science and true religion of
which gentlemen and scholars dreamed since Plato's time.
Marshall McLuhan (1964) has also predicted radical
changes to result from the transformation of experience into objective
information. According to McLuhan, the main effect of this electric
age is that:
We see ourselves (our experiences)
being translated more and more into the form of information (and)
moving toward the technological extension of
consciousness.
We see the confluence of subjective and objective
techniques for bringing about this transformation and extension of
consciousness. And we would agree with Kiefer who believes that the
best approach is to be found by combining the functions of the
experimenter and the subject, so that the Biocybernaut adventure
inward can draw on the best of both worlds.
The rapidly expanding ability to transform our
experience into information presages an awesome expansion of human
consciousness and awareness. Kiefer calls it "the greatest adventure
into infinite space that we have so far undertaken, moon landings and
planet probes notwithstanding," and he suggests that if the reports of
the very early pioneers in this field or "the heroes that we know as
... the Buddha, the Christ, and the Prophet are at last verified in
our experiential physiological laboratories, it will be found that
inner space and outer space are infinitely coextensive and timeless
with no boundaries or limits distinguishable in any direction."
We seem likely soon to realize the 2000 year old
Tibetan prediction, based on the uncanny insights of the Tibetan
mystic experience, that a major advance in human consciousness will
occur during this century (McGlashan, 1967). As we explore the
possibilities of feedback techniques in the goal of the
objectification of experience, we encounter Marshall McLuhan, the
oracle of the Electric Age, hauntingly echoing Teilhard de Chardin and
musing:
Might not our current translation of
our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make
of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness?
End of series - return to Spiritual Science Index
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