Doubt, Skepticism and Disbelief
Introduction
The ego/mind is aware that it is vulnerable to the chagrin of error. In an effort to protect itself from that vulnerability, it assumes that a form of protection is provided by skepticism or doubt. The propensity for trust also reflects the quality of early-life parent-child interaction. Love supports trust and faith, whereas harshness or neglect results in negative attitudes toward life. A pattern emerges for the processing of new information based on estimates of credibility that can vary from naïve gullibility to hostile defiance, iconoclasm, and even misogyny.
Because survival is not possible without developing a pragmatic sense of reality, the average mind develops a processing system based on presumptions and likelihoods that is serviceable and avoids extremes. Through experience, the sophisticated, mature mind holds new information as tentative or provisional and awaits further confirmation through evidence or experience.
Innate to this process of reality testing is reliance on the senses and the mental processing of the linear world of form and its representative mental images and concepts. The range of understanding and comprehension is further influenced by brain physiology, which, as has been described, depends on the level of consciousness itself. Thus, the animal-instinct-dominated left-brain style of processing is, by virtue of the limitation of evolution, unable to comprehend nonlinear context, including the spiritual dimensions. (The instinctual limbic system calibrates at level 120.) The left brain looks for linear content; the right brain looks for meaning and understanding (nonlinear content).
With favorable karmic/biological inheritance, the capacity develops for trust; thus, nonlinear spiritual context and comprehension can be accepted as factual without the necessity for subjective verification. The information is then held as a belief and defended as being true. Few people comprehend the complexity of advanced theoretical quantum theory, but they appreciate and accept the authority of the experts who do. Thus, the wise trust the wiser, at least intellectually and operationally, and their own lives are thereby enhanced and benefited.
The Skeptic
While skepticism as a prevailing attitude may be the result of emotional or personality disorder (e.g., Freud’s ‘anal defiant’ or ‘oppositional’ personality rebellion against parental authority), it is also a contrary intellectual attitude (Bauer, 2006) that evolves as debate and lengthy discourse, such as that in current science regarding the authenticity of subjective experience and ‘first-person’ testimony. This conflict can be seen as merely the consequence of paradigm limitation.
Professor Charles Eisenstein of Pennsylvania State University has done specific research on skepticism (“A State of Belief Is a State of Being”) and points out that the ‘experimenter effect’ has created credibility problems in mainstream science, upon which the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle has already had a major impact. His research revealed that below supposedly reasonable intellectual skepticism, there is a motivational field of hidden, spiteful, ‘mean-spirited’ attitudes and worldviews that are frequently revealed to be “cynical, arrogant, dogmatic, smug, and emotional, as represented by professional ‘debunkers’.”
All the above are demonstrated by professional skeptics who spend years trying to disprove Einstein via lectures and books, all of which describe and depict Einstein as a “fake,” an “imposter,” and an “Emperor who has no clothes.” Despite negative reception, the authors continue diatribes undaunted (cal. 190) and are apparently oblivious to the confirmation of Einstein by the development of nuclear energy.
In psychiatry, this is termed “logic proof delusional disorder” (Muller, 2006), as is seen in such beliefs as “The holocaust never happened,” or, “The United States government engineered 9/11.” In this mental disorder, the world is seen as deluded, whereas the person’s worldview is valid. Thus, the disorder arises from egotistic grandiosity, which is immune to reason and motivated by envy and its accompanying malice and misrepresentation. It is due operationally to a combination of defective brain function and unmitigated infantile narcissistic omnipotence and hostility toward envied authority figures.
From the ancient Greek, skeptikos denotes the philosophy that truth is unknowable and certainty of knowledge is impossible (as was stated by the followers of Pyrrho). As pointed out by Descartes, the human mind, unaided, is unable to differentiate res cogitans interna (how things appear to the mind, such as perception or opinion) from res externa (essence, intrinsic reality). Socrates made the same observation, that men seek only the good but are unable to discern illusory good (appearance) from essence (the ‘real’ good).
Whereas, operationally, rational skepticism has provided benefits in revealing false claims and foolishness, skepticism itself has often been foolish. This has been demonstrated by its denunciations of every single important discovery in history, from the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kittyhawk to the radio, and currently in the sciences, such as medicine and physics, including quantum theory. It is, of course, also traditional (de rigueur) for skeptics to deny the reality of the entire nonlinear spiritual paradigm of context as well as Divinity itself.
If, as skepticism believes, actual truth is unknowable, then, obviously, its own premises and arguments are also fallacious; thus, skepticism is hung by its own petard.
One reason why the level of truth of skepticism calibrates so low at level 160 is that it is primarily a variant of Nihilism (cal. 120). Skepticism fails to serve its avowed ends because it innately lacks the tools to address or investigate the realities of context, especially those that calibrate at the levels of 500, 600, and above. Also, skepticism deals only with content and fails to realize that the significance of meaning itself is completely dependent on context. Context, in turn, reflects the expression of intention, as demonstrated by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and is aligned with the power of the level of consciousness of the observer.
In contrast to naïveté or skepticism, consciousness research is not intended to prove or disprove anything; it is done to merely discern or confirm the level of information not previously available by mentation, reason, or supposition as it bypasses perception and opinion. Calibration is impersonal and merely results in a number, the significance of which is implied by its location on the calibrated Map of Consciousness.
Skepticism is limited by dependence on the linear mental domain, about which skepticism itself states it is dubious. The objectives of the skeptic would obviously be better fulfilled by taking advantage of the nonlinear techniques by which the profound influence of context can be identified. By analogy, one cannot utilize Newtonian physics or differential calculus to try to prove or disprove quantum mechanics. Skepticism needs the assistance of much higher knowledge to keep up with increasing information that allows access to a more expanded paradigm of reality.
Another oddity of skepticism is the failure to recognize that the negation of the negative does not create a positive, as demonstrated by the famous classic paradox box: one makes a box and places the following statement inside: “Every statement in this box is false.”
Inability to Recognize Truth
Lack of capacity to recognize the truth can be due to (1) emotional disorders, (2) psychological conflict, (3) maturational arrest at the level of narcissistic dominance, or, most commonly, (4) simply as a result of the level of the evolution of consciousness. As was described in Transcending the Levels of Consciousness, mental functions are dominated by attractor energy fields that are designated as Lower Mind (cal. 155), and Higher Mind (cal. 275). Their characteristics are reprinted here for convenience.
Function of Mind
| Lower Mind (Cal. 155) | Higher Mind (Cal. 275) |
| Content | Content plus field |
| (specifics) | (conditions) |
| Accumulation | Growth |
| Acquire | Savor |
| Remember | Reflect |
| Maintain | Evolve |
| Think | Process |
| Denotation | Inference |
| Time = restriction | Time = opportunity |
| Focus on present/past | Focus on present/future |
| Ruled by emotions/wants | Ruled by reason/inspiration |
| Blames | Takes responsibility |
| Careless | Disciplined |
| Concrete, literal | Abstract, imaginative |
| Limited, time, space | Unlimited |
| Personal | Impersonal |
| Form, facts | Significance, meaning |
| Focus on specifics | Generalities |
| Exclusive examples | Categorize class–inclusive |
| Malice | Rejection |
| Reactive | Detached |
| Passive/aggressive | Protective |
| Recall events | Contextualize significance |
| Plan | Create |
| Definition | Essence, meaning |
| Particularize | Generalize |
| Pedestrian | Transcendent |
| Motivation | Inspirational, intention |
| Morals | Ethics |
| Examples | Principles |
| Physical and emotional survival | Intellectual development |
| Pleasure and satisfaction | Fulfillment of potential |
| Linear Content | Essence, context |
| Religious extremism | Spiritual balance |
| Skepticism | Intelligent study |
| Naïveté | Sophistication |
Of great significance is that Lower Mind dominates fifty-five percent of the U. S. population and approximately eighty-five percent of the world’s peoples and societies. Cultures and people dominated by Higher and Lower Mind represent widely divergent (‘clashing’) worldviews. Interestingly, the disparity is not reflected in IQ levels but instead represents the capacity to discern essence from appearance and the degree of narcissistic egocentricity.
Descriptively, Lower Mind is characterized as pedestrian, literal, mundane, and prone to politicized rationalization and rhetoric, whereas Higher Mind is discerning, abstract, principled, and disciplined. Lower Mind is associated with proclivity for negative emotions, especially hatred. In contrast, Higher Mind is more positive, benign, and seeks accord and forgiveness.
Of serious prognostic significance is that Lower Mind is prone to domination by force as it is associated with left-brain, animal-type information processing. Higher Mind seeks to influence via higher levels of truth and reason. Thus, Lower Mind is aggressive and intrinsically prone to violence, whereas Higher Mind promotes peace and is reluctantly defensive when attacked. This is comparable to the animal world where the herbivores are under constant threat of attack by the carnivores. In today’s world, the carnivores threaten with nuclear bombs, and the herbivores timidly cannot decide on a defensive missile warning system or even ‘call a spade a spade’ for fear of ‘offending’.
Refutation of Truth
Spiritual evolution is correlated with a level of consciousness and is thus representative of the balance between allegiance to the ego versus allegiance to truth, which is a reflection of spiritual reality. The calibratable level of consciousness reflects dominance of an energy attractor field that consequently includes a concordant range of options. Thus, the worldview held by consciousness levels in the mid-400s is seen as fallacious by consciousness levels 170 to 195, which is not only very common but also the very core of sociopolitical conflict in the history of the world.
The lowest levels of human consciousness are those of criminality, as represented by the inability to delay or control animal impulses, pleasure at defiance, and the lack of capacity to learn from experience. The defect is represented in the inherent and often genetic incapacity to discern right from wrong. Clinically, the condition is termed ‘conduct disorder’ or ‘psychopathic personality disorder’, and its biological substrate is often associated with congenital defect of the prefrontal cortex of the brain’s gray matter. This condition is diagnosable by age three and is clinically generally intractable and uncorrectable.
One such example was observed by the author on an airplane trip during which a grandmother with an infant on her lap sat in the next seat. The infant repeatedly grabbed and pulled on the grandmother’s beaded necklace, and she said, “No,” and slapped the child. The infant persisted and did it again, over and over, each time being slapped and scolded, but it continued the same behaviors. The grandmother slapped him and said “No” for more than one hundred times during a half-hour period, yet the child seemed to have no capacity to desist or learn from experience. Such failure to learn from negative experiences is demonstrated prominently by grandiose dictators and the leaders of rogue nations who propagate mass destruction of their very own populations.
Uncontrollable willfulness and defiance are seen during the infant state of the ‘terrible two’s’ in which the omnipotence of the infantile ego is pitted against parental control. Parents may lack the energy or volition to respond appropriately, so the child fails to learn impulse control and is unable to discern the basic survival lesson of right from wrong. This is concordant with very low consciousness levels, especially those below 90, as represented by criminality. The same condition plus glibness is seen in its political expression termed ‘malignant messianic narcissism’ (megalomania), which is described in Truth vs. Falsehood (reprinted below for convenience) and characterizes all dictators; they are typically lacking in benign benevolence or good will and thus arise to political power based on hatred.
Characteristics of Dangerous Political Leaders
Ruthless, glib cunning
No regard for human life
No value to truth
Lies are routine and normal
Facts are irrelevant
Win at any cost; predatory
No morality or ethics
No spiritual values
No humanistic ideals
No concern for others
Gloat at clever deception
Value only conquest, win, defeat
Willing to sacrifice society
Manipulative, clever
Power oriented; no limits
Greed is valued and okay
Presume others are lying
No value to honesty
Ridicule weakness
Sadistic, cruel
Thrive on conflict
Vain, pompous, despotic
No personal honor
Atheistic, avaricious
Religion is merely a tool
Vengeful, jealous
Envy, malice, and hate
Malevolent, vicious
Incapable of love
Spout rhetoric, are bombastic
Fake honesty; are deceptive
Free of guilt; no conscience
Egoistic, narcissistic
Okay to make false accusations
Assume others same as self
Attract naïve apologists
Unrestrained by logic or reason
Paranoid, alert, guarded
See military as cannon fodder
Weak ‘deserve’ their fate
Manipulate patriotism
No concern for loss of life
Willing to ‘poison the well’
Despise honesty, integrity
Assume grandiose title
Use others with no compunction
Feed off adulation
Controlling, domineering
Faithless; no remorse
Blame others for own failures
Seek wealth and trappings
‘Macho’ stance with boots, whip
Exploit, hide behind religion
View normal people as simpletons
Racial and religious prejudice
Seductive; recruit followers
No allegiance to countrymen
No consideration for others
Unforgiving, vindictive
Play victim to justify violence
Oblivious to suffering of others
Condone brutality, death, pain
Willing to impoverish others
No constraints; extremist
Employ criminals as henchmen
Despise fairness
No scruples, ethics, or morality
No compassion; violent
Extol terrorism, threats
Megalomaniacal, grandiose
Clever rather than intelligent
Calculating, scheming
Sanctimonious, sacrilegious
Willingly bear false witness
Exploit innocence and naïveté
Ravage the weak and vulnerable
Consider populace as idiots
Repay loyalty with elimination
Consider selves above the law
Devoid of insight
Merciless; savage
Barbaric (saw off heads slowly)
Breed conflict; duplicitous
Compartmentalized
‘Good face’ to the pubic
Maintain ‘innocence’
Use fear and threats
Renege on ‘agreements’
To the defiant personality, truth or authority is resented merely because it represents authoritarian parental control. The impaired personality sees integrous truth as threatening and thereby easily rejects it as fallacious.
Lesser degrees of this impairment correlated with sociopolitical viewpoints are expressed as the ‘me’/‘sensitive’ generation. This anomaly emerged as contentious focus on the inflated ‘rights’ of narcissism and hedonism. This viewpoint is vociferously expressed as secularist, antireligion, anti-God, and anti-spiritual-reality social views. These were supported by the emergence of philosophical systems (Marxist) of so-called ‘postmodern’ moral relativism (cal. 160 to 190). The grandiosity of the ego was then revealed by terming this set of inflated egoist viewpoints as ‘superior’, ‘elite’, or ‘correct’. Most importantly, this set of trends resulted in the impairment of reality testing bulwarked by academic/populist and sociopolitical ideology and sophistry that parades as ‘free speech’.
The infiltration into academia of such biased rhetoric brought about the current major decline of academic excellence as demonstrated by not only the ‘tolerance’ but also the glorification of a whole set of lectures that calibrate at 130, or even as low as 90. (The question again arises: Would you want a brain surgeon who calibrates at 90 to perform surgery on you; or an investment counselor at 90 to handle your money; or even a baby-sitter at 90 to take care of your children?)
The paradox of the antiauthoritarian position and its followers is that it is in itself ultra-authoritarian and oppressively totalitarian, as well as hostile and prone to malice and hatred. The associated emotions are consequent and innate to the attractor fields of the lower levels of consciousness. The political fallout has been experienced as the bitter fight for allegiance between the segments of the population that calibrate above and below the critical consciousness level of 200.
The main target for social/political contention is focused on morality itself. Thus, there are the apologists and supporters for savage criminals who are responsible for the deaths of thousands, or sympathy for Islamic terrorists (also responsible for the deaths of thousands), or the ‘rights’ of MS-13 gang members who are responsible for the torture and deaths of thousands.
The impairment of reality testing subsequent to indoctrination by the fallacious rhetoric of relativism results in such bizarre examples as celebrities flocking to express sympathy for pedophiliac child killers or psychotic dictators who murder thousands of their own countrymen and entertain themselves with the slow sexual torture of women hung by wires from the ceiling whose deaths deliberately take a matter of days.
Authority can be disagreed with (e.g., dissent) without necessarily taking the opposite view, which forces the disagreement to fall to the level of fallacy. By comparison, compassion is much more appropriate than alignment with falsehood because defense of evil results in alignment with it. The fact that deranged criminals cannot help being what they are does not mean that one has to agree with them.
The impairment of the capacity to discern spiritual reality is considerably a consequence of relentless propaganda and programming by the media aided by the naïveté of the average human mind, which is easily glamorized and programmable via distorted inflation of fallacy disguised as fashionable, trendy viewpoint.
Social Survival
Importantly, the onslaughts of popularized nonintegrity are aimed at and supported by the fifty-five percent of the population in the United States that calibrates below consciousness level 200. However, the level of consciousness of the American population overall still calibrates currently at the level of 421. (It was at 426 but decreased in the Fall of 2006.) The reason for this apparent disparity is that the levels below 200, as can be seen by exponential comparison, are deficient in the power represented by the high calibration levels of those who are integrous. Therefore, the very high level of intrinsic power of only a relatively few members of the population maintains the overall capacity for survival and more than counterbalances the effects of the negative. (For example, if the top one hundred people are removed from the U. S. population, the overall average level of consciousness drops to 320. If the top one thousand are removed, the overall consciousness level drops from 421 to 220.)
Refutation of spiritual reality, morality, integrity, and truth are a drain on civilization. While the overall consciousness level of mankind is at 204 (November 2007), if the top one thousand individuals in the world were removed, the level would be at only 198. Compassion for the less evolved motivates society’s endless efforts at correction and providing supplementary assistance to the evolutionarily less fortunate. Thus, compassion, acceptance, and tolerance are necessary to maintain a pragmatic social balance and effectiveness that also includes awareness of social/political/religious realities such as Islamic apocalyptic triumphalism, which currently operationally calibrates at 60 (November 2007).
Atheism, Agnosticism, and Nonbelief
Genuine intellectual doubt is integrous in that it considers decisions and beliefs to be important and significant. Reason resorts to intellectual processing on the presumption that information plus logic can arrive at truth through mental processing. This also allows the tolerance of dichotomy and ambiguity that are consequent to the linear experience of maturation and emergence of wisdom. It is eventually discovered that it is not possible for the intellect alone to answer every question that can be devised (the hypothetical), and therefore, faith is a concomitant to every level of evolution. Faith is a mental constant, and therefore, it is only a question of where to place one’s faith.
The narcissistic core of the ego is aligned with being ‘right’, whether being ‘right’ means being in agreement with wisdom or rejecting it as invalid. With humility, the serious searcher discovers that the mind alone, despite its education, is unable to resolve the dilemma of how to ascertain and validate truth, which would require confirmation by subjective experience as well as objective, provable criteria.
While reliance on authority through faith suffices for the majority of integrous searchers of spiritual reality and truth, the mind may still be left with lingering doubt. However, resolution is possible by means of the subjective experience of inner spiritual evolution that results from transcending the levels of consciousness plus validation of spiritual reality in today’s world through the methodology of consciousness calibration. This combination, plus dedication to truth as a pathway to God, eventually results in overcoming the classic, great ‘doubt block,’ on the other side of which spontaneously emerge realization and revelation. All doubt arises from the self and is dissolved in the overwhelming Reality of the Self by which one is home at last with the peace that is consequent to certainty.
That the mind is unable to prove a proposition does not mean that the proposition is false. This is the pitfall of the atheist because the mind is unable to know truth. It is simultaneously equally unable to disprove it for it would then be in the paradox of having to prove its opposite. The narcissistic core of the ego unconsciously and naïvely presumes that it is omnipotent and therefore lacks the humility that is requisite to arriving at higher Truth. Interestingly, atheists are unable to use the consciousness calibration technique for to deny God is to deny Truth.
While atheism calibrates at consciousness level 190, agnosticism at level 200 is more sophisticated, more aligned with reality, and merely admits that the intellect, in and of itself, is unable to resolve the problem of the actual existence of God. Agnosticism calibrates higher than skepticism because it does not include a negative emotional attitude of antagonism towards Truth. It merely humbly states that the intellect is unable to arrive at a satisfactory answer. The limitation of agnosticism is looking to the intellect for the answers to problems that cannot be solved at the level of the intellect alone.
Agnosticism and atheism may also be concordant with chronological age and tend to diminish with emotional maturity via the pathway of wisdom. Truth is then sought, not just in the linear dimension of content but also in the nonlinear realm of context, which expands the ability to comprehend Truth. In many areas of life, speculation is replaced by confidence and expansion of the capacity for awareness of higher dimensions that reveal themselves via the mechanism of revelation rather than linear intellectual processing.
Doubt and disbelief often presage major leaps of consciousness that may arise consequent to remotivation due to frustration, calamity, or merely maturation and the emergence of wisdom. This has been noted by many people, even saints, who went through major conversion experiences, including the miraculous. One such pathway can involve the loss of early-life religious faith due to catastrophic circumstances, which is then followed by years of seeking for confirmable truth. Such inner exploration is accelerated by the practice of meditation itself without an associated belief system. Thus, for the nonbeliever, Buddhism is often practical and attractive as the Buddha taught the eight-fold pathway without belief in ‘God’.
Another pathway suitable for the nonbeliever is provided by the ancient Vedas and Upanishads that anticipated the discoveries of quantum mechanics. They also spoke of the Ultimate Reality of the Absolute Principle and the infinite field of consciousness itself as the primordial Reality that is beyond the illusions of perception as well as mentation. The pathway of Advaita (nonduality) is the pristine avenue for the integrous search for Truth that excludes all belief systems. This has been described in detail in prior works. Although nonduality leads to Enlightenment, the study of Vedanta can lead to over-involvement in various Indian schools of philosophy that may then become distractive belief systems.
For the skeptic/disbeliever, the pathway of inquiry into the search for the essence of consciousness itself is the most pristine route and methodology as it bypasses all belief systems and requires only integrous curiosity and sincerity.
All mental (linear) depictions of spiritual/religious truth are subject to invalidation, argument, and dispute. In contrast, consciousness itself (nonlinear) is beyond definition or description and thus not subject to skepticism, doubt, or disbelief.
Investigation into the nature of consciousness leads directly to the very source of Illumination, for the Light of Consciousness is the condition of Enlightenment. By its Light, the Knower and the Known are united in the Realization of the Self as God Immanent.