WillSpirit!

Where Will meets Spirit
∞ Love, Clarity, Balance, Peace, & Bliss ∞

A science, mental health and spirituality blog written by a physician.








  • Red_Exclamation_DotDisclaimer
    • Dear Visitors:
      Although I trained and practiced as a physician, my background does not include formal instruction in psychiatry beyond basic medical education. This journal presents ideas about treatment philosophy, but must not be considered therapeutic advice. Abrupt changes in one's psychiatric medications can trigger profound cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms, including suicidal thoughts and actions. Consequently, pharmaceutical agents should not be increased or decreased without supervision by a mental health clinician.

    • ON THE OTHER HAND, your brain belongs to you, and your opinion counts. If you decide that changing your medication regimen will serve your best interest, then I believe your providers have an obligation to help you try to achieve your goals. I want everyone to be educated about their options, and do what will be most helpful for themselves. No one should feel pushed around by dogmatic and/or limited viewpoints, whether those of psychiatrists, anti-psychiatry advocates, or myself.


Yes and No

At the end of the last essay, I floated a possibility that’s been on my mind for some time: the simultaneous existence and nonexistence of God. The reader can reasonably ask: How could this make any sense at all?

To begin, allow me to point out that God actually does exist in at least two undeniable ways. First, the experience of God is real. This I assert from firsthand knowledge, but there have been countless independent descriptions of encounters with God. Whether in the form of apparition, voice, or mere sense of presence, millions of people have entered transformational states of mind that felt exactly like Godly visitations. The ultimate meaning of these experiences can be questioned, but not their occurrence. Yes, they may simply point to neurologic activity that simulates a sense of divinity. But for the person who enters such a numinous frame of being, there can be little question that it is highly significant, if not life-changing. The God experience happens.

The second sense in which God certainly exists is as a meme: an idea with high transmittable potency. The concept of God is so alluring it endures no matter how much scientific materialism works to undermine it. People want or even need to believe in a spiritual principle. Not everyone demands the personal sort of God we read about in the Bible, but a large majority of us want to believe in sacred forces underpinning human life.  The powerful idea of God has driven many historical events, with consequences both lovely (e.g., renaissance art) and terrible (e.g., the inquisition). God as a concept has had substantial impact on humanity, and so must be granted a measure of ontological reality.

So God clearly exists in the human mind and culture, but does it exist independently? Was there any God quality in the cosmos before there were people to conceive of it? This, obviously, is a more difficult question.

First, let’s work out what we would consider a ‘God quality.’ There are many definitions of God, ranging from a white-bearded man on a throne in heaven to a diffuse sacredness that permeates everything but has no independent or even conscious existence. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to define ‘God’ to mean a global awareness that originates outside the material brain and nervous system.

The most adventuresome scientifically-informed philosophers propose that pervasive cosmic information flow could arise via quantum mechanical means. Specifically, a pixelated pseudo-vacuum at the Planck (i.e., vanishingly minute) scale would manifest changing states at the depths of reality that might permit data storage and processing independent of biological form. I find such arguments interesting and plausible. They by no means prove the existence of such cosmic computing, but they permit it.

So we have a somewhat plausible mechanism whereby computing and memory might occur outside biological (and silicon) form. This activity is postulated to be holographic across the cosmos, so that every component of the universe would have access to the entire matrix of embedded information, albeit with reduced resolution. Thus, each human brain may float immersed in this cosmic information pool, and could potentially access vast amounts of accumulated wisdom.

How would this information appear, once accessed? To a Christian mystic, it might appear as a luminous being radiating infinite love. To a Native American, a totem animal might be recognized as laden with mystery and power. A Buddhist adept might observe a disintegration of ordinary formed existence, with ultimate reality emerging as a conditioned and impermanent whole. To an Einstein, busily working his equations in the patent office, the encounter might take the form of an astounding and elegant mathematical solution to a difficult problem. To an atheist, nothing might ever appear at all.

Remember I defined ‘God’ as an awareness that originates external to the material brain. By this proposed model, the information matrix exists outside the brain, but encounters with Godlike awareness occur within it. Some of people described above, if their experiences arose in the proposed fashion, would encounter God by this definition. For them and them only, God exists. Thus, God would exist for the Christian, but not for the atheist. The heightened animal wisdom seen by the Native American is something we could embrace as God. Einstein’s writings make clear his appreciation of sacredness in his work, but it’s not clear that he believed in or experienced an actual divine consciousness. The Buddhist meditative state is certainly numinous, but does not involve a focused, externalized presence and so probably would not qualify as a manifest God.

Thus, if there is indeed a deeply buried stratum of information stored in the universe, a human brain might at times be able to tap into it in a way that appears as concentrated cosmic consciousness, i.e., God. In this view, God is a pervasive and omniscient quantum data stream that originates outside the brain, but depends on a permissive human mind for manifestation in discrete or personal form.

Of course, dogmatic materialists will scoff at this argument. Those of us who explore novel ideas tend to get ridiculed by those threatened by outside-the-box thinking. Nevertheless, I assert that this is all possible even if unprovable.

Furthermore, the religious believer will insist that God is not merely an awareness, but also an agency. God doesn’t just observe the cosmos, He directs it. We can negotiate a way out of this looming conflict, however. If the information matrix exists as suggested, it lies embedded within all matter/energy and all space/time. Everything we observe happens as a consequence of energetic and material activity that occurs several levels above this pixelated ground of being. To the materialist and rationalist, all events appear random. Such a person can reasonably point to stochastic processes bubbling up through quantum uncertainty as determining the evolution of life and the universe at large. On the other hand, the devout person could insist that the randomness is only an appearance, and that in fact the Ground of Being ultimately determines how history expresses itself: what appears random is actually guided by the deeper pool of information. Both views could be defended. By the argument developed above, both views might even be true for the ones who hold them.

The good thing about this model is that it would release us from the prison of either-or thinking. We would no longer have to debate whether God exists in the way proposed by the faithful. We can grant that they experience such a being. We can likewise grant that for others, the universe never displays any sacred presence along those lines. For each of us, Beauty appears in the form we most appreciate.

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Yes and No was published on August 7th, 2011 . 14 comments






Kinda Like the Borg, Only Nicer and More Democratic

Allow me to expand a bit on one of the last post’s two themes. My main point concerned the problems with adhering too tightly to belief systems, which after all come from mental activity that cannot be expected to produce infallible pictures of reality. I’ll come back to this another time, because dogmatic rigidity underlies so many problems on individual, community, and global levels. But the second point had to do with the possibility of a human psychic collective.

This sounds a bit Jungian, I’m sure. The ‘collective unconscious’ is one of the roots of my thinking on this matter. Another is the idea (often entertained in New Age discussions) that quantum entanglement connects brain activity into a global consciousness, thus providing a theoretically plausible mechanism for linkage between minds.

For the moment, let’s grant that such interchange occurs: all human minds resonate on some deep layer of reality, probably at the Planck scale, as many modern writer’s believe. If that’s the case, then even though we experience reality as individuals, and have been indoctrinated to expect that the learning of our lifetimes remains isolated and will be lost at death (unless communicated through material channels), our minds are actually intertwined.

There would then be a web of mental and emotional understanding encircling the planet. I’ve occasionally read this compared to the internet with its various hubs interconnected but acting largely autonomously. If the quantum mechanism could be proven, the analogy would be sound.

Elvin Laszlo writes of an Akashic Field that has its own fundamental consciousness, independent from but connected with all life forms. This postulated entity supposedly works (in rough outline) in the quantum mechanical way suggested above. It’s purpose, or at least its effect, is to learn through the ages so that evolution on all scales (cosmic, galactic, biologic) becomes more and more efficient with repetition, through endless time.

If this is true, then the whole point of human consciousness may well be to acquire knowledge and experience of all sorts. On the collective level, this universal human mind would by now be impressively wise, despite our individual ignorance and social insanity.

Having acquired such perspective, this mind would presumably look back on its atomic elements, and began to nudge things in a better direction. Maybe the mind is not organized enough to accomplish this. Quite possibly it doesn’t even exist. But I sometimes get a hopeful feeling that we will find a way to save ourselves in the eleventh hour. The only hope, it seems to me, is that we begin to act as the interdependent creatures we actually are. If we can’t accomplish this working in the current, isolated mode, then maybe we will transcend to a more resonant state of collectivity. A long shot, I admit. But worth dreaming about.

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Kinda Like the Borg, Only Nicer and More Democratic was published on March 6th, 2011 . 2 comments






Who Says There’s Something Out There?

It must be obvious to anyone paying attention that WillSpirit has dropped down on my list of priorities. But it remains dear to my heart, and I recently responded to a reader’s comment at length. Because that discussion furthers the topic of my last post, I’m elevating it to the level of a post of its own. This is something I’ve done many times before. Partly the cause is laziness, but mainly it’s because the best way to formulate one’s thoughts is to address valid critiques offered by others. Here’s the comment from Jane-Ellen:

Why “strange” modifying coincidences? I’m sure you are aware that statistics, and the human mind’s many times proven aptitude for forgetting failures of coincidence and latching on to examples, require such coincidences.

Here’s my response:

One can divide world views into two basic groups. On there one hand there is the Newtonian picture: all experience is traceable to matter (or by extension energy); there is no inherent direction or meaning in the cosmos; and everything is random. The opposite opinion is that the universe is not reducible to Newtonian mechanics, has both meaning and direction, and although random on some scales still manifests inherent organizing tendencies.

This isn’t simply a question of atheism vs spiritualism. The problem can be framed in more modern terms, and in fact rather succinctly: do quantum mechanical behaviors have non-trivial influences on macroscopic events? There can be no question that at the smallest scales of reality Newtonian pseudo-random determinism breaks down. But does the strange behavior seen at atomic and subatomic scales have any manifestations in our day-to-day lives? If so, then all manner of truly strange (meaning directed) coincidental events are possible. Mind would have some influence over matter, and hence over the course of history. We would live in a universe that could, indeed, be considered spiritual, though in a scientific way.

The jury is still out on this. If you want to read some works that very cogently challenge the Newtonian view, and present strong supporting evidence, start with Rupert Sheldrake’s, The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Powers of the Extended Mind. See if you can honestly dismiss the mountains of data he amasses that suggest traditional physical models are simply not sufficient to explain many mental phenomena. Then look at Quantum Aspects of Life, edited by Derek Abbot and Paul Davies. This text presents both the pro and con sides of the argument for significant quantum effects in macroscopic living systems.

The jury is indeed still out. But contrary to the views presented by convinced atheists, the idea that Newtonian principles are insufficient to explain life is neither ruled out nor marginal. Very prominent scientists are beginning to state, quite openly, that the twentieth century’s mechanistic, materialistic philosophy was incomplete. So sure, any coincidence can be explained in two ways. Maybe dozens of coincidences can, even when they all seem to point to the same kind of directedness in the cosmos. But whether either explanation is the correct one must be determined on the basis of all the evidence at hand. After a great deal of reading about this subject, I think there is a pretty good chance that the universe is more interconnected and subtle than I was led to believe in college. Not all intelligent, scientifically trained people agree with this view, but many do.

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Who Says There’s Something Out There? was published on December 12th, 2010 .






The problem of a gambling God

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Today’s post is just a (kind of) short addendum to yesterday’s treatise on conflict in mental health discussions. Mandy, my wife, pointed out another reason that people tend to cling tightly to narrowly defined solutions: fear of uncertainty. I agree with her that the discomfort we all have with ‘not knowing’ plays a role in the common scenario of debates about policy turning into heated arguments between adversaries who each are certain they have the right answer. Because uncertainty raises anxiety.

When quantum mechanics began to be elucidated early in the twentieth century, physicists started to see a fundamental role of chance in the structure and behavior of matter. The inescapability of uncertainty and randomness made Einstein uncomfortable. Even though his groundbreaking work on Brownian motion and the photoelectric effect helped usher in the quantum age, he still wrote (in a letter to Max Born) that he was “convinced that [God] does not throw dice”.

The idea of a non-deterministic universe strikes many as unsettling, to say the least. One of the objections to the theory of natural selection has always been that ‘believers’ insist that ‘God’ has orchestrated the creation of the universe, the earth, and life. Natural selection postulates that random mutations, and probabilistic sorting of genes, form the raw material of changes in life forms. If the mutations or gene combinations are advantageous, they get passed on to subsequent generations in larger numbers than if they cause the organism problems. With thousands and millions of iterations, these changes add up to dramatic alterations in living forms and ecologies. But the underlying engine of change, by that view, depends on haphazard events. This assaults the worldview of those who believe in a ‘hands-on’ God who directs events and answers prayers.

Some day I will write about how I believe how the universe may accommodate both probabilistic development, universal consciousness, and a certain kind of facilitated (rather than completely random) progression of history. My point right now is just that since the dawn of human self-awareness, people have had a strong need for predictability, and for a sense that they are not just adrift in a sea of chance. We prefer certainty over doubt, black and white over gray.

I heard an interview with a scientist who has written about why people need to be right. Despite a lot of internet searching I can find neither the scientist’s name nor the book, if it was a book, or I would reference them here. But the basic idea seemed to be that if you see a lion approaching, you need to ‘know’ without taking time to think, that the proper response is to flee. She who doubts hesitates, and she who hesitates is lost. Once decisions start being processed through cognitive and analytical channels, reactivity slows down, so that if an instant choice must be made one had better have a predetermined action pattern in place. I don’t know how much of this I agree with (and I may have the concept wrong), but the point is well taken that there seems to be an innate need for certainty.

So opening our minds to the possibility that our survival mechanism (whether medication, a specific kind of therapy, or a spiritual philosophy) might be fallible becomes quite difficult. We would rather hold tightly to the belief that our ‘answer’ is comprehensive, our world predictable, and our emotional safety assured.

So if I wrote yesterday’s post again, I would include our inherent uneasiness with uncertainty as another of the reasons why people become so bound to constricted views. A tightly defined, closed off ideology feels safer than one that is wide open, and leaves us aware of our vulnerability. We’d rather sit in a watertight box than risk feeling adrift in the random currents of fate.

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The problem of a gambling God was published on August 20th, 2009 . 2 comments






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