One of my strongest early memories is that of suddenly realizing, as a young boy, that I was an entity separate from the world around me. For a period of perhaps several months, I would often catch myself thinking in sheer amazement: “I am me… I am not the other people or things I see… how peculiar!” Indeed, such a realization was most curious and strange. I was a separate entity and, most disturbing of all, I had apparently never been anything or anybody else. How bizarre and counterintuitive, yet logically inescapable, such conclusion was. I can still vaguely recall the disquieting sense of disappointment and claustrophobia that accompanied it. Such was the birth of what I now understand to be my ego: that which defines me as the subject of my experiences.
As the years passed, it was that very ego that became a fundamental tool for the pursuit of what, for me, has been the most intriguing, interesting, important, and urgent question of all: What is the true nature of reality? Just what is reality and what is the nature of our condition as conscious entities within it? It was the ego that allowed me to pursue an investigation of reality in an objective manner: as an investigator who could impartially observe nature, thereby making inferences about its operating mechanisms. Science seemed to offer the correct procedures and tools for that investigation, so I pursued science for several years, secretly hoping to answer that ultimate question before my time here would expire. Having understood how science actually works, I realized its limitations as a method for the pursuit of ontology; that is, the study of the true nature of being and existence. Indeed, science models the relationships between things, but is surprisingly limited in clarifying their underlying nature. It leaves out the truly important questions, as articulated so eloquently by Terence McKenna when he commented that “we human beings must admit that ours is a peculiar situation: having been born, we are autonomous, open chemical systems that maintain themselves through metabolism at a point far from equilibrium. And we are creatures of thought. What is that? What are the three dimensions? What is energy? We find ourselves in the strange position of being alive. […] So what is it for? Spenser and Shakespeare, quantum theory and the cave paintings at Altamira. Who are we? What is history? And what does it push toward?”1 Science cannot answer this kind of questions without immediately raising other, similar questions. Since it captures only relationships, its answers ultimately entail circularity and are not fundamentally satisfying.
Indeed, science is the quintessential third-person investigatory method. The key historical premises of the scientific method are two-fold: first, one must assume that there is an objective reality “out there” that does not depend on one as observer of it. In other words, one must assume that the world would still go on strictly according to the laws of physics even if there were nobody looking at it. Second, one must assume that one’s first-person observations of reality are unreliable and suspicious. After all, our senses are imperfect: what I see or hear may not really correspond to what is “out there.” Therefore, in science, sufficient third-person confirmation of one’s observations is paramount. In practice, this translates into the need for the repetition of experiments by multiple individuals or groups, with consistent resulting observations, before a scientific model can be declared truthful. In science, the definition of truth is that which is independently but consistently reported by a sufficient number of observers under controlled observation conditions. Since we know that all observations are subjective in nature, and that we have no direct access to an objective truth “out there,” a central assumption in science is that objective truth corresponds to the statistical consistency of individual subjective observations. When the particularities and idiosyncrasies of individual observations are significant enough, they invalidate an overall conclusion. Otherwise, they are discarded as statistical noise around the averaged-out observation that is then taken as the reflection of objective truth. Either way, the scientific method does not attribute ontological value to the idiosyncrasies of individual subjective experience.
Notice that the second premise is a consequence of the first: the assumed unreliability of first-person observation is itself grounded on the assumption that reality is objective. It is the assumed objectivity of reality that provides a neutral reference against which one’s first-person observations can be judged. If I look at a traffic sign and observe it to be green, that observation can be judged against the objective reality of the state of the traffic sign: if it is indeed green, my observation is correct; otherwise, I am probably color-blind and a liability on the roads, facts that the traffic sign cares nothing about. If not for the assumed objectivity of reality – that is, its independence from conscious observation – reality itself would be a subjective concept dependent on whoever experiences it. Since the world does not seem to work that way, the premise of objectivity is ubiquitous.
Here, a brief detour from our main line of argumentation is necessary. Quantum mechanics is often cited as a segment of science wherein the assumption of objectivity has collapsed. We often hear claims that, according to quantum theory, the observer inherently interferes with what is observed, thereby somehow creating his or her own reality. We hear that objective reality, independent of the observer, does not exist in a quantum world, something often called the “observer effect.” While the current state of scientific understanding indeed cannot invalidate such speculations, and while it is a central theme of this book that such speculations may be, in a certain way, correct, it is also true that the mainstream position of science remains consistent with its original premises: even in the case of quantum mechanics, the models of mainstream science, with the advancement of our understanding of quantum decoherence and interpretations of quantum reality based on parallel universes,2 have managed to preserve objectivity as a property of nature.
It is important that, in any discourse about the underlying truths of nature, one carefully avoid the temptation to illegitimately hijack the mainstream positions of science. Such temptation stems from the fact that, according to the standards of our materialistic society, whose origins go back to the European Enlightenment, a statement or position is only respectable and deserving of belief if its derivation has been grounded on the scientific method. Because of this historical fact, those who attempt to promote something – be it a product, a technique, or a theory – often seek to associate that something to science, precariously as it may be.
The European Enlightenment embodied a reaction to the superstition and arbitrary morals that had ruled European society for centuries. After all, superstition and arbitrary morals were creations of men, not the inherent properties of nature sought as final truths. Science attempted to dispel nonsensical assertions about reality by the simple use of reason and observation. Overtime, that led to the formalization of what has become a very clearly defined and strict process: the scientific method. The reliance of societies worldwide today on the scientific method is explainable by science’s spectacular success in modeling nature for engineering purposes; that is, by science’s efficacy in leveraging the materials and forces of nature in the service of men. It is, after all, undeniable how the application of the scientific method has improved the length and quality of our lives over the centuries.
The effectiveness of the scientific method rests on its clear and strict application. Saying that something is scientific must, therefore, entail strict compliance to that method. Nonetheless, often things popularly purported today to be scientific are not scientific at all. As physicist Richard Feynman once asserted, following merely the forms of science does not entail compliance to the scientific method any more than the “cargo cults” of pacific islanders entailed the air delivery of cargo.3 True science requires much more than white coats or the use of scientific jargon. True science requires staunch and systematic skepticism about one’s own hypothesis until the only reasonable alternative left – in the framework of the reigning paradigm of the time – is that such a hypothesis be true.
So does that mean that assertions about nature that are not strictly grounded on the scientific method are valueless? To answer “yes” to this question would logically require at least two elements: first, that the scientific method be effective; and second, that the scientific method be sufficient to explore all aspects of nature. There is no doubt about the correctness of the first statement. But there are at least two ways in which the second statement is false.
As discussed above, the scientific method is grounded on the premises of the objectivity of reality (a philosophical position often called “realism”) and the unreliability of first-person observation, the latter following from the former. According to the scientific method, an observation is only acceptable as true if objectified – that is, quantified – and corroborated by a sufficient number of other independent observations. Largely due to its roots as a reaction to superstition, the scientific method is fundamentally skeptical of one’s own subjective perceptions, placing all ontological value on an assumed objective reality. Yet, the existence of an objective, external reality cannot be proven beyond doubt, for we are all confined to our own individual perceptions and private inner worlds. Even the observations of nature reported by other people are themselves but elements of our own captive inner worlds.4 As Robert Lanza put it, “living in an age dominated by science, we have come more and more to believe in an objective, empirical reality and in the goal of reaching a complete understanding of that reality. [...] But we’re fooling ourselves. Most of these comprehensive theories are no more than stories that fail to take into account one crucial factor: we are creating them. It is the biological creature that makes observations, names what it observes, and creates stories. Science has not succeeded in confronting the element of existence that is at once most familiar and most mysterious – conscious experience.”5 Therefore, science seems to leave out a legitimate avenue for exploring nature: that of a purely first-person method wherein one dives into the depths and inner recesses of one’s own consciousness. Indeed, many aspects of our private inner worlds are ineffable and cannot be objectified. It is conceivable that such inner worlds, through subjective perception mechanisms not yet scientifically understood, may give us access to aspects of nature no less ontologically valid than anything objectively verifiable, but which are inherently beyond the scope of a third-person, quantified approach. Since our inner worlds are, beyond any doubt, a part of nature, this is the first way in which science is an insufficient method for exploring nature.
The second way in which science is insufficient is its inability to capture the underlying qualities of things and processes in and by themselves, as we perceive them. Again, the scientific method allows one to make models of the relationships observed in nature, but is fundamentally limited when it comes to establishing what the elements of nature are per se. A model is an abstract mechanism whose elements and dynamics merely correspond to elements and dynamics of nature in an isomorphic manner. But models provide us no access to nature itself. The making of an accurate model allows us to predict and explain natural phenomena in an abstract, quantified framework, but not to make assertions about their intrinsic reality. Indeed, a scientific model is as far removed from reality as a computer-based flight simulator is removed from real flight: one would hardly claim that a flight simulation, no matter how accurate, is flight. Think of String Theory, for example: it models nature according to imaginary, abstract, mathematically described “strings” that oscillate in certain ways, such modes of oscillation corresponding to observed phenomena of nature in an isomorphic manner. But it leaves out the obvious ontological question: Just what are those strings?
British philosopher Dr. Ray Tallis once eloquently captured the limitations of the scientific method. As he put it, “science begins when we escape our subjective, first-person experiences into objective measurement. […] Thus measurement takes us further from experience and the phenomena of subjective consciousness to a realm where things are described in abstract but quantitative terms. To do its work, physical science has to discard ‘secondary qualities’, such as colour, warmth or cold, taste – in short, the basic contents of consciousness. [...] Physical science is about the marginalisation, or even the disappearance, of phenomenal appearance.”6 Yet the only world we live in is a world of color, warmth, cold, taste, etc. By abstracting away from this first-person perspective, science restricts itself to a utilitarian role as enabler of technology and engineering. It ends up having nothing to say about the true nature of what we actually perceive in consciousness, which is the sole carrier of reality as far as we can know. Therefore, while science has an incalculably valuable role to play in our society as the enabler of technology, to truly understand the nature of our condition we need more than science.
What, then, might a method of investigation complementary to science look like? The very premises of the scientific method give us very clear clues. Indeed, if science is grounded on the premise that reality is objective, what avenues of investigation could be explored if one assumes, instead, that reality is fundamentally subjective? If science neglects the unique and idiosyncratic nature of first-person experience as irrelevant statistical noise, what might those very idiosyncrasies then reveal when assumed to be valid and studied in depth? Strictly speaking, these assumptions are even more parsimonious than the premises of science, for they do not postulate the existence of anything beyond the contents of consciousness. Such considerations all point to a common direction: that of an investigation of nature through the exploration of one’s own mental landscape. I will call this method “subjective exploration,” contrasting it to the “objective exploration” entailed by science, just to have a compact label to refer to later.
The question now is: just why should one believe that subjective exploration can provide new knowledge about the true nature of reality? After all, an exploration of our own mental landscape seems fundamentally restricted to whatever information or associations are already encoded in our brains. Learning new things about reality, on the other hand, must entail downloading knowledge into our brains that was not there before. How could we download new knowledge into our brains by looking inside our own minds?
The hypothesis here, which we will elaborate on extensively in the next chapter, is the following: through mechanisms yet unknown to science, our minds have direct access to a largely untapped repository of knowledge about reality. Under the right circumstances, we can gain direct awareness of aspects of nature inaccessible through objective means, thereby tapping into knowledge not previously present in the structures of the brain. What originally led me to give some credit to this apparently implausible possibility was an earlier realization that some people seemed able, through a form of direct insight, to arrive at the same realizations that had cost me years to formulate through objective, rational analysis. Once I had accepted this possibility, I carried out my own experiments of subjective exploration. Such experiments, described at length in upcoming chapters, convinced me of the possibility that a deep exploration of mind could indeed grant access to knowledge about the true nature of nature that was either new or had been forgotten.
Still, in order to ground and make sense of this hypothesis, we need to postulate a reasonable and believable mechanism, speculative as it may be, by means of which mind could gain direct access to aspects of reality otherwise inaccessible to objective investigation. A tentative model for just one such mechanism is described in the next chapter.
Before we move on, though, an important observation must be made. Science, as a method for the exploration of nature, makes use of many tools. Amongst these tools are reason, logic, and empiricism. But these tools are not the exclusive domain of the scientific method. In fact, they predate science by millennia. Therefore, one can legitimately use the tools of reason, logic, and experimentation while departing from strict compliance to the specific formulations and premises entailed by the scientific method. In doing so, one is no longer doing science, but may still very well be correctly and fruitfully applying reason, logic, and empiricism to their full extent. It is my hope that this book, while not at all attempting to be scientific, is indeed well grounded on reason, logic, clarity of thought, and on experiments relevant to its hypotheses.