How do we know what we know?

There are two separate lines of inquiry: outer and inner. Observing and testing the external world leads to knowledge about material phenomena. Looking inward offers mystical insights.

The scientific-materialist bias of our age has emphasized the former and undermined the latter, but this is misguided at best and oppressive at worst. Both avenues toward knowledge yield fruit, but they each also have limits. If we neglect or suppress outer data, as we’ve seen religions attempt, we end up restricted to mythic world views that blind us to real phenomena. On the other hand, if we dismiss inner inquiry as idiosyncratic and imaginary, we close off progress toward the wordless wisdom that offers genuine salvation to the suffering mass of humanity.

The scientific revolution, which began in the Renaissance, has taught us the value of the empirical method. Sensory input from the environment, often enhanced by instrumentation, informs investigators as they develop hypotheses. Conceptual models of reality then guide further observation and/or experimentation. The results of these tests either support the evolving theory or require changes in it. Over time, models that succeed in predicting results survive while those that don’t get revised or scrapped. As explained in the last essay, scientific concepts are judged on their ability to predict outcomes; they should not be mistaken for ultimate truth.

Science needs no justification from me. It’s power is obvious. The value of nonstop technological advancement might be disputed, but not the intellectual triumphs of physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. Never before have humans known so much about the fine details of space, time, matter, and life.

Valid science must separate observation from theory. For instance, the fossil record exists and documents that life has changed through time. To deny this implication requires painfully contorted reasoning, such as the idea that God placed fossils in the earth to test our fidelity to biblical truth. Petrified organic remains are objectively real entities. Natural selection, on the other hand, is an explanatory concept proposed by Darwin. It posits that successfully reproducing life forms pass their traits onto future generations, while the traits of those that fail to reproduce die out, leading to changes in species over time. This is a powerful notion that can be used to understand not only biology but also cultural evolution, brain processes, and many other phenomena. It appears to be an actual mechanism of change, but the concept remains debatable, at least in principle. Possibly some more comprehensive explanation will emerge in the future, though if a better theory does arise, it will likely include natural selection as a limiting case. (Much like relativity theory reduces to Newtonian dynamics when velocities are in the range of everyday experience.) In any event, the verified fact that life forms evolve over geological time is separable from theories that explain how this happens. External observations and the concepts they fuel can be recognized as distinct from one another.

Inner exploration operates very differently. Deep states of meditative consciousness and sudden mystical intrusions occur commonly and stereotypically, but they neither support nor require elaborate conceptual theories. The consistent and recurring themes of such states guide generalizations but not specifics. As I’ve said in many previous posts, the main features include recognition of the profound unity of the cosmos, realization of its inherent rightness, and awareness of pervasive love emanating throughout. Secondary elements may also arise, such as insights about transience, insubstantiality, and causality. Words are inadequate to the explanatory task at hand; verbal descriptions are mere shadows of the actual experience. Because language is so inappropriate, conceptual formulation quickly obscures the heart of realization.

In essence, inner inquiry leads to knowledge that is simultaneously observation and explanation, both comprehended on a level that transcends words. This doesn’t prevent people from writing volumes about mystical insights, but such efforts are only pointers to an experience that provides immediate understanding.

Note how different this is from scientific work, where observations generally seem confusing until a theory is developed to show their coherence. Mystical realization obviates the need for theory, because it comes fully packaged as both observation and insight. When conceptual frameworks are constructed, they become susceptible to debate. They leave the spacious meadow of directly realized truth and enter a forest of controversy.

There is an area of overlap between science and mysticism. We see it most clearly when creative theorists ponder nature until an insight abruptly emerges in consciousness. The greatest thinkers, like Einstein, recognize the source of such inspiration to be mysterious and beyond deliberate control. In an echo of the mystical experience, deep contemplation leads to sudden recognition of an elegant order in the world.

Similarly, mathematicians work with purely mental objects, yet time and again their internally referent constructions have proven applicable to natural, external processes. Thus, mathematical formulations developed by Bernhard Reimann were crucial to Einstein’s development of general relativity theory. Pure, abstract reasoning (i.e., inner exploration) led to a framework that predicted astronomical observations never previously encountered by humans.

Inner inquiry and outer empiricism work differently but show areas of overlap. Both enrich human knowledge and understanding. For a blogger obsessed with mental wellness, what most distinguishes the two is that successful meditative and contemplative explorations lead directly to peace of mind. External observations are seldom so healing, except when they prompt inspiration that emerges from the depths of consciousness. When that happens, we feel warm satisfaction similar to what arises when we open to the beauty of pristine nature. The inner heart of awareness can be summoned from outside, but it germinates within. Looking inward is thus the surest path to fulfillment.

Today I had my sixth (or seventh?) Magnetic Resonance scan. This seems worth mentioning because for every previous MR study I’ve taken a sedative. Not today.

In the past my anxiety levels were high and the idea of being squeezed into a long, narrow tube felt terrifying. To slide into that device without a heavy dose of something like Valium felt inconceivable.

But nowadays my anxiety is less severe; and when it arises, it troubles me less. My meditative skills are solid. And I know better than to imagine the building bursting into flames with me stuck in the maw of the scanner.

So I kept my thoughts neutral, my body relaxed, my mind focused on my breathing, and my eyes closed. Everything went smoothly. The one difference I noticed was that the scan seemed to last a lot longer than before, even though in clock time it was actually shorter. Something about the lack of sedation altered my subjective sense of duration. Other than that, the MR was a breeze.

It’s nice to have this marker of progress. Another sign of change is how my recent depression lifted fairly quickly. Only four days after my announcing a fair amount of despair, I feel much better. Partly this is due to my new writing goals, proclaimed in the last essay. But I’ve watched similar quick recoveries several times of late. Events depress me, but I bounce back sooner. Over and over.

Don’t get me wrong: my moods still feel brittle. I’m sensitive and easily discouraged; there is considerable downward pressure on my spirits. But I feel more buoyant than in years past, when similar states of mind lasted longer and pulled me in deeper before resolving.

What makes the difference? Less obsessive focus on feeling state helps me function despite depression; the resultant activity keeps me from sinking into the abyss. More confidence that I can tolerate what happens in life reduces my levels of terror and anxiety. A broader perspective on my history reveals that many painful events that once felt like burdens actually taught me valuable lessons. Overall, we’re talking about vastly increased acceptance.

But there is something else, too. Call it Faith. My worldview now includes the certainty that the universe is running properly and my presence here has meaning. It’s this conviction that has me planning of a new direction for my writing. Having always defined myself as a biologist, I now also see myself as a mystic. I suppose that makes me a Mystic Biologist. I’m happy with this identity, which feels like my homeland. I look forward to realizing whatever potential comes with this embrace of self and destiny.

Every journey starts somewhere. Although this blog was launched only three years ago, WillSpirit probably began way back in 2000, right after my brain exploded.

Well, my head did not literally blow up, but back then explosion seemed the only word sufficient to convey the eruptive onset of a visionary state of mind that far exceeded any previous meditative (or even psychedelic) experience. That psychiatrists pronounced it a manic psychosis did not in the least undermine my conviction about the profundity of what was happening.

Along with the visions came a burgeoning sense of being called to connect my education in physics, biology, and medicine with spiritual Truths that suddenly seemed self-evident. In a grandiose state of mind, I imagined myself one of God’s chosen prophets. The gravity of my new mission felt irresistible and overpowering.

But it weakened. Maybe the medications calmed me and helped me see my limitations and lack of realism; or maybe they derailed me from my proper path. All I know is that before long the idea of connecting my scientific training with my mystical experience seemed terribly impractical. I went to graduate school in bioinformatics instead.

That was the first of many aborted career plans that followed the end of my profession as a surgeon. Readers know my latest flop was the acupuncture business. Time and again I’ve compromised my true interests and passions while aiming for something more likely to lead to worldly success. I now recognize this as a doomed strategy.

During a recent dinner with good friends, I watched my inward sense of vitality and outward appearance of animation build as I spoke about connections between Science and Spirit. For the first time in quite awhile I recognized how powerfully these parallels attract me.

I never was a scientist in the truest sense of the word. Although a devoted student of scientific subjects, I always felt bored and limited when working in a lab or doing field study. My interest is in drawing analogies, making intuitive leaps, and painting a global picture of reality that is consistent with science but closer in tenor to poetry. My deepest heart wants others to open their eyes to the sweeping vista of reality as it appears to me.

In all honesty, allowing my passion free reign feels more important than writing this blog, though WillSpirit remains quite dear to my heart. I recognize that penning my uneven essays here helps me and helps others; it is a small but important project that must continue. But something grander is begging to be born from this cracked shell of a person. Most likely, the resulting neonate will appear lovable to me and me only. But it needs to burst forth into this world and cry out its Love of Life.

No longer will it suffice for me to harass my friends and family with my intricate ideas about the Cosmos. Nor is it enough for me to write boring philosophical posts about the Universe and Humanity’s place in it. I need to complete the vital task laid before me twelve years ago. And at last I understand the form my message needs to take.

It isn’t a question of proving that a realm exists beyond the Newtonian worldview accepted by conventional science. Any honest assessment of available studies will show that reality is richer than the desiccated landscape painted by technocrats. True, only a few anomalous phenomena have been convincingly demonstrated, and little is understood about the nature or limits of this strange arena in which people know about the world in ways that contradict customary reality. But scientific evidence is not what I feel drawn to provide.

Skeptics will never be persuaded, and most of us seeking deeper answers to life’s dilemma need no further proof of mystery. What I think is within my power to offer is a poetic distillation of the creation story as told by science, beginning with the moment of the universe’s first explosion into space, and ending with the present day. I can speak to those who feel lost and yet hopeful that Life makes sense. Many must yearn to square transcendent and intuitive experiences with a scientific worldview that has proven its utility but has yet to demonstrate its humanity.

So here at WillSpirit I’ll keep writing about my fluctuating moods, my changing fortunes, and my ongoing efforts to keep myself sane. But in the background, and probably linked to this site, I want to start a new project. A life’s work, if you will.

And by Life’s Work I mean to highlight my sense of calling but also to describe the project itself. I will work to bring my notion of the sacred to bear on my notion of Life. Not because physics and biology haven’t been written about from spiritual stances before; many quality tomes about such topics line bookstore shelves. Not because anything I say will be unique or especially inspiring. This drive to write something worthy of the countless hours I’ve spent thinking about these subjects is fueled by a deep-seated need. A yearning to describe biology and physics in spiritual and poetic terms has gripped my soul since the first shattering awakenings so many years ago. WillSpirit served well as an initial step, but the time has come to go further. And at last my goal isn’t success, it’s expression.

Only by doing something that feels momentous will I cease feeling pointless and defeated. Only by undertaking a truly impractical task can I free myself from the bonds of mediocrity and repeated failure. If I’m going to try once again to produce, then I want to at least be listening to my heart this time. Better to incinerate my dreams in one massive volcanic caldera than let them once again sputter out like wet fuses.

Only when I speak or write about Life in all its complex glory, and Spirit in all its confusing paradox, do I feel truly inspired. Perhaps this is yet another false start. Maybe I’m overestimating my reach or (heaven forbid) feeling grandiose. But I’m beginning to see that fulfillment can only be found by concentrating on what most fulfills me.

On a comment left at Storied Mind, a great blog and depression resource created by John Folk-Williams, I mused about whether or not depression is an illness.  (A recent post on this site covered the same question from a different angle.) What follows connects my reply to John’s essay with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which WillSpirit readers have heard me discuss many times before.

John focuses on ACT in his essay and only mentions the illness question in passing. The issue comes up because the ACT view of mental symptoms contradicts the biological disease paradigm of conventional psychiatry.

ACT is based on behaviorism, a philosophy that dominated psychological study in America for much of the early and mid-twentieth century. By the 1980′s behaviorism had been supplanted by cognitive science, a movement that was driven by neurobiology’s computational model of the brain. Behaviorism suffered intense criticism after falling from grace.

The backlash was so thorough and effective that when I first learned that ACT is a behaviorist approach, I assumed it succeeded despite that heritage and not because of it. Behaviorism has a reputation for being overly mechanistic and dehumanizing. The common caricature is that it rejects the importance of mental life and views people as automatons who don’t choose their actions but only react to environmental contingencies.

In his 1974 book, About Behaviorism, B.F. Skinner (the most prominent leader of the movement) defended his views. The text more often assumes than establishes the basic foundations of its philosophy; it insists that  inner life is a consequence rather than a cause of a person’s interaction with his or her environment but doesn’t provide much supportive evidence (although subsequent research has bolstered such assertion). So the book isn’t terribly effective as a counterattack. But it does demonstrate that Skinner looked at human behavior with an admirably practical eye.

In managing depression and other psychiatric symptoms, it is this practicality that makes a behaviorist approach effective. CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) has trained many of us to challenge negativity. But thoughts arise rapidly and seldom cooperate with attempts at control. Positive thinking is a great concept, but every uplifting thought is dogged by its counterargument. The affirmation, “I’m a good person” seldom can escape whispering rebuttals like, “but remember the time you…”

I don’t deny the helpfulness of monitoring thoughts to weed out inaccuracies and unfair self-criticism. But CBT assumes that feeling is a result of thinking, and that we can feel better if we think better; both these premises are questionable. Thinking and feeling are internal processes that mutually interact and respond to environmental input; thinking isn’t the sole determinant of how we feel. And we all know from experience that positive thinking by itself never resolves a deeply entrenched depression.

But the real problem with CBT, and most other therapies, is precisely that they teach us to focus on thoughts and feelings as we battle mental difficulty. If we are stuck in a deep funk and spending our days in bed, we are taught that if we adjust how we view our childhood, or how we think about our current situation, we will soon feel better. Having established a sunnier inner landscape, we’ll want to get up and live our lives again. Sadly, most of the time the sun simply refuses to shine no matter how much we rethink our past or challenge our negativity.

Skinner would reply that our staying in bed results from learning, not from thinking or feeling. Something in our environment has taught us that lying down pays off. Maybe we get sympathy. Maybe we avoid facing stress. There is a reward that sustains the behavior despite the fact that it undermines our progress in life.

The answer to depression isn’t to wait for our inner state to improve while we do little to alter externals. Rather, we should act on the outer world, which will provide new consequences and teach us better behavior. If I attend a community picnic when depressed, two benefits accrue: I interact with others and so increase my social connections, and I spend some time outdoors. These positive outcomes, especially if repeated a few times, will teach me to adopt similar outgoing behavior in the future. Waiting for the depression to lift before attending such an event would win me neither more friends nor contact with nature. My future behavior would be unlikely to change.

Which finally brings me to the substance of my comment on Storied Mind and the question of whether depression is an illness. Here is an excerpt:

…whether depression is an illness or not [is] a semantic question, and it can have different answers depending on one’s stage in dealing with the problem. If ‘illness’ means a condition that feels unpleasant and limits life, then yes, depression can be (and usually starts out as) an illness. But if it means a definable brain disease that can be treated with specific medications, one can only say that at this point there is little evidence to support that view. I’ve followed this research for years and have yet to see any findings that solidly (or even plausibly) demonstrate organic pathology. For every suggestive piece of evidence one can find powerful refuting arguments.

Although the disease concept helps relieve us of shame and so can be helpful early on, eventually we want more than escape from blame. We want better living. ACT offers an approach to achieving that…  what works is living life with purpose without so much emphasis on how [we] feel or what [we] think…

I no longer react reflexively out of fear, anxiety, insecurity, or negative self-talk. As I’ve begun to live a richer life despite my frequent feelings of sadness, regret, and fear, I’ve started to see that the ‘illness’ concept no longer serves me as it did earlier…

I would add, in light of the behaviorist perspective, that if the answer to depression lies in interacting differently with the environment, then it seems unlikely that the problem resides in the brain. Instead the difficulty is, and has always been, a consequence of the world around us and how it’s taught us to respond to circumstances. This is a radical concept when compared with the traditional view on mental distress. It takes the problem out of the realm of thoughts and feelings and places it in the real world. And isn’t that where we want to live our lives?

For once, I am going to try to keep this short. I’m thinking under 500 words (or so).

Spirituality seems to be a popular topic among blog readers. The first time I blogged about it, a couple of days ago, the number of visitors shot up by almost 100%. Nothing succeeds like success, so I’ll continue in that vein for a little while.

If I could get paid for hours spent thinking about metaphysics, I wouldn’t be worrying about my finances. I admit that armchair philosophers are a dime a dozen, but I do believe my past provided insights that help lend consistency and logic to my ‘theory’. The framework that I have constructed builds on my long study of science (especially biology–see ‘About‘), and also the spiritual ‘psychosis’ I mentioned before. Some day I’ll go into a longer description of my ‘visions’, which in addition to hallucinatory experiences, also connected with real-life events in a kind of spooky, serendipitous way. For the purposes of building a model of creation that works for me, the significant part of my ‘awakening’ was what I described before as “all time (from the first infinitesimal fraction of a second after big bang until the present moment) and all space (from an impossibly small subatomic scale out through the full span of the universe) [hovering] in my awareness at the exact same time, like an instantaneous glimpse of all creation.”

The effect brought home the unity of the universe, and the collapsability of time. I did not see into the future, naturally, but I sensed its presence. I realized that from the right perspective, it would be possible to observe the full sweep of the universe’s history, from beginning to end, as a single unit. And not just on one scale of size, but simultaneously sensing the smallest subatomic entities (possibly ‘strings’, if string theories are correct), and the entire macroscopic universe, including each galaxy, quasar, black hole and every other kind of celestial object. If there is a consciousness watching our experience unfold, it would ‘see’ creation as a single entity in all its dimensions (four macroscopic–including time–and possibly many more on subatomic scales). Of course, I am not talking here about such a putative ‘awareness’ observing creation from a physical vantage point, and certainly not a point in time. As I’ll go into another time, I suspect this consciousness (assuming its existence) is not just watching the universe as if it were a movie, but is also the reel of film, the movie screen, and the projector. That seems to me the only kind of omniscient mind that could actually exist. When I believe my psychosis connected me to something ‘real’ (rather than just showing me new circuit paths in my brain), I feel blessed with to have glimpsed the cosmos through (let’s go out on a limb here) God’s eyes. It was, I suspect, similar to the epiphany people have when facing imminent death, when their whole lifetime is seen in an instant. Only I didn’t die and the life wasn’t just mine, but that of the entire cosmos. And for that instant, I understood that I was the cosmos, too.

Yes, the experience had ‘psychotic and grandiose’ stamped all over it. But at the time I only knew that God had blessed me with a special sight. Now of course, I cannot be sure. In fact, it is perhaps likely that I simply experienced a kind of seizure that distorted my conscious mind (which doesn’t mean deeper principles weren’t at play). But it felt as real as daily life and left me convinced of its veracity. So I like to take it at face value and see where it leads in terms of generating a metaphysics. I do not claim originality; only the way I write about these ideas is mine alone, not the concepts themselves. So far, it probably sounds like pantheism. Yes, I believe something like that, but there is more. This (sort of) short post is the introduction to what I have come up with. Stay tuned.

Just kidding. I don’t know what number blog this is, though I imagine I’m within a hundred million or so of being correct. Which means I doubt you are even reading this. If you are, in fact, an actual person reading my actual first post, then you deserve my eternal gratitude. Thank you. Thank you.

I am working out what this blog will be about, but I see three main subjects as likely to come up. They are related, it least in my mind:

1.   God, or something like it.

2.   Biology, our essential nature (though refer to ’1′ above for a possible add-on to our biology).

3.   Mental health, which I interpret broadly. I don’t think anyone has perfect mental health. It is a question of working toward improvement. In my mind, mental health includes emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and even somatic health. Only with all these components in harmony, more or less, can we be said to be in a state of true mental health. But what do I know?

Actually, I believe I do know some things about mental health. I also have a long history of studying biology, including an undergraduate degree in Zoology, a Master’s degree in Biophysics, and an MD. As for God, well I’ve been working on that one for a long time, but no one can really say anything definite about it. I have my ideas, and I look forward to sharing them here.

I have so much to say, but the hour is late. I am only starting to post right now because I finally got my website and blog working, after a fashion. So much to learn…

So good bye and good night for now. If you are out there reading this, I would be thrilled to receive an email from you.