Book Review – ‘Living in a Mindful Universe’ (3/7): the need for co-ordinated action (a)

Alexander and Newell are using words to describe the ineffable, so not everyone would sign up to every detail, but their basic sense of the transcendent is essential as a motivating perspective to give us the necessary level of sustained conviction to put aside our differences and undertake the challenging task of building a better world. It’s true that they have used their website to share valuable ways to help us raise our level of consciousness. Is that enough though?

This a truly important issue, and I feel it is one we may need to explore together at some length. I sense that this first attempt may already be too long!

As an introvert, part of me would like to believe I can just step back from the world and pursue my spiritual journey quietly, interacting with just a few like-minded souls. As I noted on my blog somewhere, when I was working with a Jungian therapist he jokingly shared his perception that on my grave would be carved the words, ‘He died with his options open,’ so reluctant was I at that point to commit to any cause or to join any movement.

I still do not vote, except in Bahá’í elections. The political and economic system is, in my view, broken. I’ve explored this at some length at various times on my blog (for example see link).

Culture of Contest

Our habitual acceptance of competition and profit as natural blinds us to the problematic nature of our culture. Our ‘culture of contest,’ to borrow Michael Karlberg’s evocative phrase, is a broken model that: (a) prevents the truth being discovered and justice reliably being achieved in court rooms where the whole point in most Western countries is for two opposing teams to wrangle until one wins, (b) thwarts equity as well as increasing inequality in the economic sphere, where the prize of increasing wealth goes to the most effective competitor rather than the most worthy one, and (c) obstructs wise decision-making in the political sphere because the main point is to defeat one’s opponents in elections and remain in power for as long as possible.

To use present day party politics and the economic model as the two most relevant examples, we can see first of all that a competitive model doesn’t do a lot to widen the moral imaginations of its participants in the political sphere. Karlberg presents the weaknesses of this system clearly:[1]

As Held points out:

“Parties may aim to realise a programme of ‘ideal’ political principles, but unless their activities are based on systematic strategies for achieving electoral success they will be doomed to insignificance. Accordingly, parties become transformed, above all else, into means for fighting and winning elections.”

. . . . Once political leadership and control is determined through these adversarial contests, processes of public decision-making are also structured in an adversarial manner.

. . . .Western-liberal apologists defend this competitive system of electioneering, debate, lobbying and so forth as the rational alternative to political violence and war. Based on this commonsense premise, we structure our political systems as nonviolent contests, even though most people recognise that these contests tend to favour more powerful social groups. . . . . [T]his premise embodies a false choice that arises when the concept of democracy is conflated with the concept of partisanship. . . . . [W]e lose sight of a third alternative – non-partisan democracy – that might be more desirable.

Recent events illustrate how competitive divides corrode relationships even within the same political party.

In terms of economics, Karlberg argues the same deficiencies appear in a different guise, and in fact we ignore the fundamental principle of moral restraint on markets cited by one of the founding father’s of economic thinking, Adam Smith:[2]

Since western-liberal societies have largely neglected Smith’s call for moral self regulation, yet accepted Smith’s warnings about state regulation, they have been left with a culture of virtually unrestrained market competition. Indeed, competition has become the pre-eminent value of a deeply materialistic age. And in the absence of external and internal market regulation, its culture of competition – or culture of contest – has led to widespread social conflict and ecologically degradation.

He goes on to describe these as the causes of (1) extremes of economic inequality, driven by the capitalist’s ‘attempt to extract the maximum surplus value from the labour force that is the primary source of their wealth,’ (2) rivalries between nations, and (3) a ‘relative absence of both external state regulation and internal moral regulation’ resulting in ‘unprecedented conflict between our own species and most other species on the planet.’

Interestingly, a more recent read was singing from a similar hymn sheet. Daniel Pick, in his book Brainwashed: a new history of thought control, picks up on an idea of Hannah Arendt’s:[3]

By politics she meant a process whereby a people, in their plurality, come together to engage with each peaceably, to look at real problems, debating trying to determine collectively what is needed; to consider matters in a properly inclusive and deliberative fashion.

He goes on to say, ‘[a] society, she suggested, needs to be engaged in a common conversation across all the differences.’

He summarises her position by saying, ‘In short, we need to struggle for the creation, or in some instances the restoration, of conditions that enable us better to engage with each other as people, with requisite information, and to think in company with others about our futures, to compare notes on harms and on remedies, with less role for money and the banishment of corrupt corporate lobbyists in that process . . .’

Sadly, opting out does not provide an effective response, but something else is needed as well if we are to effectively engage in this sort of demanding process.

Drawing on Spiritual Powers

The Bahá’í position declares that it is necessary to draw upon both material and spiritual powers (Social Action):

An exploration of the nature of social action, undertaken from a Bahá’í perspective, must necessarily place it in the broad context of the advancement of civilization. That a global civilization which is both materially and spiritually prosperous represents the next stage of a millennia-long process of social evolution provides a conception of history that endows every instance of social action with a particular purpose: to foster true prosperity, with its spiritual and material dimensions, among the diverse inhabitants of the planet. A concept of vital relevance, then, is the imperative to achieve a dynamic coherence between the practical and spiritual requirements of life.

This same document unpacks the exact implications of that very clearly indeed:

When the material and spiritual dimensions of the life of a community are kept in mind and due attention is given to both scientific and spiritual knowledge, the tendency to reduce development to the mere consumption of goods and services and the naive use of technological packages is avoided. Scientific knowledge, to take but one simple example, helps the members of a community to analyse the physical and social implications of a given technological proposal—say, its environmental impact—and spiritual insight gives rise to moral imperatives that uphold social harmony and that ensure technology serves the common good. Together, these two sources of knowledge tap roots of motivation in individuals and communities, so essential in breaking free from the shelter of passivity, and enable them to uncover the traps of consumerism.

From a Bahá’í point of view, it is from the fusion of both material and spiritual powers that the necessary understanding and motivation derive.

The Bahá’í perspective shares Matthieu Ricard’s awareness, expressed in his book Altruism, of the need to link the local through the national to the global (Social Action):

No matter how essential, a process of learning at the local level will remain limited in its effectiveness if it is not connected to a global process concerned with the material and spiritual prosperity of humanity as a whole. Structures are required, then, at all levels, from the local to the international, to facilitate learning about development.

Cultural Creatives

My sequence on what Ray and Andersen in their book The Cultural Creatives try to convey goes some way to explaining why. They discuss their sense of the exact nature of the cultural change we are all experiencing but from the point of view of the Cultural Creatives:[4]  

This group, who constitute 25% of the population of America (i.e. about 50 million people), feel we are in a period of transition. The authors call it the Between.

The Between is the time between worldviews, values and ways of life; a time between stories. The transition period, [John] Naisbitt concluded, “is a great and yeasty time, filled with opportunity.” But it is so, he added, only on two critical conditions: if we can “make uncertainty our friend,” and “if we can only get a clear sense, a clear conception, a clear vision of the road ahead.”

Ray and Anderson[5] are cautious and see this period as a ‘dangerous tipping point.’ They describe the position of Cultural Creatives[6] as seeing ‘an antique system that is noisily, chaotically shaking itself to pieces.’

This is not all negative:[7]

. . . this era is at least as much about cultural innovation as it is about decline and decay of established forms.

Ray and Anderson, in terms of interdependence, quote Mary Ford:[8]

You have to have a definition of self that’s bigger than [society’s] definitions, that’s grounded in how connected we all are to each other.

And this needs to lead to coordinated action, something which I feel plugs a hole in Alexander and Newell’s nonetheless impressive boat. The skilled marketing they do on their Sacred Acoustics site does not go far enough.

The how of mobilizing effective coordinated action is, of course, easier said than done, and we’ll be looking at that in more detail in the next post.

References:

[1]. Beyond the Culture of Contest – pages 44-46.

[2]. Op. cit. – page 38-42.

[3]. Brainwashed — pages 270-73.

[4]. Cultural Creatives – page 235.

[5]. Op. cit. – page 236.

[6]. Op. cit – page 40.

[7]. Op. cit. – page 33.

[8]. Op. cit. – page 21.

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Book Review – ‘Living in a Mindful Universe’ (2/7): the concept of the Universal Mind

Universal Mind

‘Abdu’l-Bahá

The Bahá’í Writings refer to the ‘universal mind’ as when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá responds to a woman’s letter advising her ‘to forget this world of possession, become wholly heavenly, become embodied spirit and attain to universal mind. This arena is vast and unlimited . . . .’ Jung uses the term ‘collective unconscious’ and Yeats refers to the Anima Mundi.

Both Mishlove, my bridging text, and Alexander and Newell, my main focus, discuss what seems to be essentially the same concept at some length. In fact, Mishlove uses exactly the same expression as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:[1]

This higher law concerns consciousness, mind, or spirit in the universe – independent of the brain. Different cultures… all share a common thread, ‘the phenomenal worlds [including the brain] owe their existence to universal mind.’

He goes on to clarify that this idea is a core part of metaphysical idealism, something we’ll be coming back to soon.

The one thing any of us can be sure of is ‘I think, therefore I am.’ As Mishlove puts it:[2]

We each have direct knowledge of mind. Nothing is more immediate and intimate. We lack direct access to anything else but mind. . . . Max Planck . . . famously said: ‘I regard consciousness as a fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. Everything we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

In his search for what he regards is the most economical explanation of reality, satisfying the demands of Occam’s razor, he explains:

.  . . Idealism, the position the universe is essentially mindlike, satisfies the requirement in the metaphysical domain.

And goes on to conclude[3] ‘Metaphysical idealism is the most logically consistent position as it eliminates the problems of both materialism and dualism. . . .’ quoting Kastrup as defining metaphysical idealism to mean ‘reality is mindlike.’

Eben Alexander

There are other routes to the same conclusion, in the case of Alexander an experiential rather than purely philosophical one. He feels his NDE was an incontrovertible disproof of the sceptical dogma that there is no spiritual dimension to reality:[4]

What I’ve experienced – and what has been experienced by millions of other people who have had NDEs and other spiritually transformative experiences – is the black swan we didn’t know to look for.

He very much feels it points towards the conscious nature of the reality that surrounds us (my emphasis):[5]

During my coma journey, I experienced this same sense of oneness with the universe as a completely unified self-awareness of all that is – a truly mindful universe. Edgar’s intuition that science and spirituality greatly strengthen each other, that their natural synthesis is an inevitable aspect of human history, is one that I share deeply.

He evokes physics as doing the same:[6]

The physics community has only become more befuddled by recent experimental results suggesting that there is no objective external reality and that consciousness (the observer) is at the very core of all emergent reality.

What we experience is captured by the Vedic word maya, in his view,[7] which is not suggesting the world is ‘not real’ but what we experience of it is rather an ‘illusion’ or as I tend to express it, a ‘simulation’. It’s not what it seems. Reality therefore, for him,[8] is best explained by seeing it in the way Idealism does as ‘fundamentally a form of thought in which the human mind participates.’ Which brings him back to the physics again in order to emphasise our interconnectedness, also one of my mantra:[9]

In metaphysical idealism, as also in quantum physics, all of the universe is deeply interconnected: any separation of a part from the whole in our thinking leads to distortion and confusion.

It should be no surprise, then, to find where this now takes him, and me along with him:[10] ‘This view considers our conscious awareness to originate in the Collective Mind, which comprises all sentient consciousness throughout the universe.’ He goes even further to speculate that this might be part of the reason we have a universe at all:[11] the ‘grander evolution of consciousness is the reason the entire universe exists.’

Importance of the Heart to our Connectedness

Readers of this blog will be aware of just how important the idea of the heart is to my understanding of my own nature. On the one hand I wrestled after starting to tread the Bahá’í path, with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s explanation of the nature of the mind, but also on the other with Bahá’u’lláh’s use of the expression ‘understanding heart’, which He stressed in many places was the key to grasping what He was trying to convey in His Writings.

So, no one should be surprised that I resonated strongly when Alexander quotes Thomas Merton[12] as describing ‘centring prayer’ as a ‘return to the heart, finding one’s deepest centre, awakening the profound depths of our being.’ At the same time Alexander emphasises the crucial importance of connectedness:[13]

We are spiritual beings living in a spiritual universe. Fundamentally, this spirituality means we are all interconnected through the Collective Mind.

Moreover, the heart is central to a fuller realisation of this truth:[14]

Maintaining awareness of the heart and an appreciative state of mind while listening to another person often results in improved clarity and increased awareness of more nonverbal aspects of what is being communicated.

Reducing the Filter

Interestingly, and this was a new insight for me, Alexander links such heightened sensitivity paradoxically to a reduction in brain activity. For starters he writes:[15]

Like the flow state, lessening the information-processing of the brain might allow the filtering function to diminish, allowing me more complete contact with the Collective Mind across the veil and setting my awareness free.

Furthermore:[16]

When one accepts that the physical brain does not create mind but serves to allow in universal consciousness, “going within” is actually the means of “going out” to know more of the universe.

This resonates strongly for me with so many quotations from mystical perspectives. There are these lines from a poem of Ali, the Successor to Muhammad: ‘How dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form/When within thee the universe is folded?’ Bahá’u’lláh writes:[17] ‘Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.’

Other Key Ideas

More resonances were to follow when Alexander closes in on ideas echoing disidentification and reflection, something I have explored many times on this blog:[18]

Once . . . . you realise there is a part of you that is separate from your thoughts – that is the key. It does not analyse, it’s simply observes. This is the first means to finding that larger part of you that exists beyond the physical world

The related idea of interconnectedness follows close on its heels:[19]

Rather than being separate individuals competing for resources, driven by the concerns of the ego, we are part of a larger whole, connected to each other in ways that bring meaning and purpose to our lives. . . .Our observed reality exists as the stage setting on which we learn ongoing lessons.

The idea of observed reality as a classroom maps onto the concept of the world as a womb of the soul in which we prepare ourselves for entry into next world beyond death.

He nails this exactly when he writes: ‘A useful approach is to consider our collective earthly existence as time spent in ’soul school.’

I laughed out loud when he torpedoed a key tenet of materialism in the plainest language possible:[20]  ‘No one gets out of here dead – there is ultimately no escape from the continuum of conscious awareness.’

Ultimately, he argues:[21]

. . . conscious awareness is the very same force at the core of all existence. Such oneness and dissolution of the sense of self, and complete identity with all of life and the source of all that is, is the pathway toward truth.

Love is the ground of being:[22]

Based on thousands of reported cases of those who have glimpsed more fully the workings of reality through NDEs and other mystical experiences, that informational substrate underlying our universe appears to be made of profound unconditional love.

We are all able to develop the capacity to connect, if we are prepared to make the effort:[23]

Truly, we all have the capacity to explore the vast well of consciousness that lies within and through us, and within and through the network of souls within which we are in a hidden but eternal pattern of connection.

Collective Responsibility

It is a journey we need to undertake together:[24]

We are all part of a vast and creative consciousness, and the evolution of all of consciousness throughout the cosmos is nothing more than the individual journey of sentient beings in coming to understand their own role in this co-creative endeavour.

We are, he feels, at a crucial tipping point:[25]

While my collective understanding is still evolving, I believe we are on the verge of the greatest revolution in human thought in all of recorded history, a true synthesis of science and spirituality.

From a Bahá’í point of view, this will not be a smooth and bland transition, as current events in the world powerfully illustrate. Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, wrote:[26]

A tempest, unprecedented in its violence, unpredictable in its course, catastrophic in its immediate effects, unimaginably glorious in its ultimate consequences, is at present sweeping the face of the earth. Its driving power is remorselessly gaining in range and momentum. Its cleansing force, however much undetected, is increasing with every passing day. Humanity, gripped in the clutches of its devastating power, is smitten by the evidences of its resistless fury. It can neither perceive its origin, nor probe its significance, nor discern its outcome. Bewildered, agonized and helpless, it watches this great and mighty wind of God invading the remotest and fairest regions of the earth, rocking its foundations, deranging its equilibrium, sundering its nations, disrupting the homes of its peoples, wasting its cities, driving into exile its kings, pulling down its bulwarks, uprooting its institutions, dimming its light, and harrowing up the souls of its inhabitants.

He compares this stage in the development of our civilisation to adolescence:[27]

The long ages of infancy and childhood, through which the human race had to pass, have receded into the background. Humanity is now experiencing the commotions invariably associated with the most turbulent stage of its evolution, the stage of adolescence, when the impetuosity of youth and its vehemence reach their climax, and must gradually be superseded by the calmness, the wisdom, and the maturity that characterize the stage of manhood.

A Motivating Force

To meet these challenges Matthieu Ricard argues that we must move[28] from ‘community engagement to global responsibility.’ To do this it is necessary ‘to realise that all things are interdependent, and to assimilate that world view in such a way that it influences our every action.’ He sees altruism as the key to this transition.

Jeremy Rifkin, as I quoted in the earlier sequence, acknowledges a possible deficit in the motivating forces of empathy that he is attempting to describe. He is aware of a potential void in the credibility of his position but has to locate motivating awe elsewhere than in the transcendent he refuses to acknowledge so chooses our connection nature and the planet instead:[29]

Empathic consciousness starts with awe. When we empathise with another, we are bearing witness to the strange incredible life force that is in us and that connects us with all other living beings. Empathy is, after all, the feeling of deep reverence we have for the nebulous term we call existence.

The Universal House of Justice brings in the transcendent when it states:[30]

Shoghi Effendi describes this process of world unification as the “Major Plan” of God, whose operation will continue, gathering force and momentum, until the human race has been united in a global society that has banished war and taken charge of its collective destiny. What the struggles of the twentieth century achieved was the fundamental change of direction the Divine purpose required. The change is irreversible. There is no way back to an earlier state of affairs, however greatly some elements of society may, from time to time, be tempted to seek one.

The essential motivating components potentially provided by the spiritual insights described by Alexander and Newell, powerful as they undoubtedly are, are, even so, simply not enough to move us past this tipping constructively. For this revolution to yield its most important fruits one more crucial thing needs to be added into the mix.

More on that next time.

References

[1]. Beyond the Brain:
the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death – page 14.

[2]. Op. cit. – page 82.

[3]. Op. cit. – page 83.

[4]. Living in a Mindful Universe – page 84.

[5]. Op. cit. – page 110.

[6]. Op. cit. – page 135.

[7]. Op. cit. – page 160.

[8]. Op. cit. – page 178.

[9]. Op. cit. – page 181.

[10]. Op. cit. – page 186.

[11]. Op. cit. – page 207.

[12]. Op. cit. – page 260.

[13]. Op. cit. – page 289.

[14]. Op. cit. – page 320.

[15]. Op. cit. – page 333.

[16]. Op. cit. – page 426.

[17]. Arabic Hidden Words – 13.

[18]. Living in a Mindful Universe – pages 437-38.

[19]. Op. cit. – page 477.

[20]. Op. cit. – page 540.

[21]. Op. cit. – page 599.

[22]. Op. cit. – page 598.

[23]. Op. cit. – page 632.

[24]. Op. cit. – page 633.

[25]. Op. cit. – page 641.

[26]. Shoghi Effendi The Promised Day is Come (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1996) – page 1. 
Quoted by the Universal House of Justice in Century of Light – page 2.

[27]. Shoghi Effendi The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, page 202. Quoted by the Universal House of Justice in Century of Light 
pages 50-51.

[28]. Altruism – page 682.

[29]. The Empathic Civilisation – page 170.

[30]. Century of Light – page 138.

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Book Review (2/2): ‘Altruism’ by Matthieu Ricard – reaching a tipping point

O CHILDREN OF MEN! Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest. Such is My counsel to you, O concourse of light! Heed ye this counsel that ye may obtain the fruit of holiness from the tree of wondrous glory.

(Bahá’u’lláh – Arabic Hidden Words No. 68)

Given the recent references to Ricard’s work it seems a good idea to republish this short sequence.

The last post, after a brief review of the closing chapters of Ricard’s  excellent book Altruism, ended with the question of how we can ensure that enough of us will want to take effective steps to change things for the better before it is too late.

Something that should help is a growing awareness that growth cannot continue (page 658):

In the eyes of the politician Anders Wijkman and environmentalist Johann Rockström, there can be nothing more perverse than an economy that grows at the expense of the raw materials that allow it to exist: ‘The world’s population is growing. Consumption is growing. The only problem is that the earth is not growing.’ . . . .

In short, as the English-born American economist Kenneth Boulding said: ‘Those who believe that economic growth can go on forever are either mentally deranged or they are economists.’

Not all economists though fortunately.

There is, for example, a growing trend for economists to discard the treacherously misleading GDP as a good guide to whether we are doing all right or not. Because (page 660) ‘[i]t ignores social costs, environmental impacts and income inequality’ it is worse then useless: it is leads to toxic decision-making. Its fundamental insanity is revealed by its inclusion as positives what are in fact evidences of dysfunction (page 667):

If a country has more crime, pollution, war, and disease, GDP increases as a result of financial transactions relating to expenditure in prisons, policing, weapons, and healthcare. This increase enters the accounts as a positive indicator of a growing economy, even though it represents a decline in well-being.’

Case closed, it seems to me.

Bhutan: for source of image see link.

There are better indicators than GDP in the process of development. Perhaps the most startling, and long-standing, is the gross national happiness index used in Bhutan (pages 664-71). Inspired by this approach, a Chilean economist has developed a model based on six principles:

• The economy is to serve people and people are not to serve the economy;
• Development is about people and not about objects;
• Growth is not the same as development and development does not necessarily require a growth;
• No economy is possible without the ecosystem’s services;
• The economy is a subsystem of a larger and finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible;
• Under no circumstances whatsoever can economic process, or interest, take precedence over the reverence of life.

Bhutan in the meanwhile is flourishing.

We are back to the main question: ‘How do we develop a sufficiently powerful motivator to reach a tipping point where positives such as this come within reach on a larger scale?’

Ricard acknowledges that (page 679) ‘we must . . . not underestimate the importance of personal transformation.’ From there we must move to the wider society within which we live and, in Ricard’s view (page 681), learn to balance what Mintzberg calls the three-legged stool of a ‘public sector made up of political forces…, a private sector made up of economic forces…, and a plural sector of social forces embodied by robust civilian conveyances.’ It is in the development of the latter that the UK and America, who over-emphasise the private sector, and China, who places too much importance on the public sector, are seriously lacking.

There is yet another step to take.

We must move (page 682) from ‘community engagement to global responsibility.’ To do this it is necessary ‘to realise that all things are interdependent, and to assimilate that world view in such a way that it influences our every action.’ He sees altruism as the key to this transition.

In this long and enthralling book, Ricard has used reason brilliantly to advocate altruism as the solution to our personal and global problems. That in itself makes it an essential read for those of us engaged in understanding these issues more deeply.

He would be the first to agree, I hope, that an intellectual conviction in altruism is not going to be sufficient to motivate enough people to rise to the level of sacrifice required for long enough to achieve the necessary effect. He ends his book, it seems to me, rather in the same trap as Rifkin did. And I’m afraid I have the same response, despite my admiration and respect for the compelling case he marshals in the seven hundred pages it took him five years to write.

Rifkin, as I quoted before in the earlier sequence, acknowledges this deficit. He is aware of a void in the credibility of his position and has to locate motivating awe elsewhere than in the transcendent he refuses to acknowledge (page 170):

Empathic consciousness starts with awe. When we empathise with another, we are bearing witness to the strange incredible life force that is in us and that connects us with all other living beings. Empathy is, after all, the feeling of deep reverence we have for the nebulous term we call existence.

This basically material trigger may be a necessary condition for empathy to grow further in our increasingly global civilisation. Is it sufficient in itself though? Even if religion is not necessarily the enemy, and I believe it is not, do we need it?

The question is whether we agree that the way evolution has shaped the brain is also a sufficient condition to produce the necessary levels of self-mastery and altruism and spread them widely and deeply enough across humanity to preserve us in the longer term.

Rifkin clearly feels it’s the best hope we’ve got, even though one of his key witnesses wasn’t sure where empathy comes from (page 350):

Although the origins of man’s capacity for empathy was a mystery to Schopenhauer, the teleology was clear. By feeling another’s plight as if it were our own and by extending a hand to comfort and support them in their struggle to persevere and prosper, we recognise the unifying thread that connects each of us to the other and all of life on earth.

I realise that just as it is impossible for Rifkin, or Ricard as well perhaps by implication, conclusively to prove that any hope of empathic rescue from our current predicament must come from our material nature because that is all we have to draw on, I cannot conclusively prove to everyone’s satisfaction that:

(a) this could never be sufficient, and

(b) that is OK because we can draw upon transcendent powers.

None the less that is my view.

The Arc of Bahá’í Buildings on Mount Carmel

The Bahá’í position declares that it is necessary to draw upon both material and spiritual powers (Social Action):

An exploration of the nature of social action, undertaken from a Bahá’í perspective, must necessarily place it in the broad context of the advancement of civilization. That a global civilization which is both materially and spiritually prosperous represents the next stage of a millennia-long process of social evolution provides a conception of history that endows every instance of social action with a particular purpose: to foster true prosperity, with its spiritual and material dimensions, among the diverse inhabitants of the planet. A concept of vital relevance, then, is the imperative to achieve a dynamic coherence between the practical and spiritual requirements of life.

This same document unpacks the exact implications of that very clearly indeed:

When the material and spiritual dimensions of the life of a community are kept in mind and due attention is given to both scientific and spiritual knowledge, the tendency to reduce development to the mere consumption of goods and services and the naive use of technological packages is avoided. Scientific knowledge, to take but one simple example, helps the members of a community to analyse the physical and social implications of a given technological proposal—say, its environmental impact—and spiritual insight gives rise to moral imperatives that uphold social harmony and that ensure technology serves the common good. Together, these two sources of knowledge tap roots of motivation in individuals and communities, so essential in breaking free from the shelter of passivity, and enable them to uncover the traps of consumerism.

From a Bahá’í point of view, it is from the fusion of both material and spiritual powers that the necessary understanding and motivation derive.

While I accept that the capacity for a high degree of empathy is wired into our brains, I also strongly believe that a higher level again can be reached, with proportionately more leverage in terms of sustained action, if we also can internalise a sense of what the Quakers term ‘That of God’ which is in all of us. Then we will not only have a strong sense of our links to one another but we will also have the confidence to act against apparently overwhelming odds that comes from the knowledge that we human beings are not alone. Bahá’u’lláh says (Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words, Arabic no. 13):

Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.

Only when that divine connection has been achieved, it seems to me, will we be able to answer the challenge issued by the Universal House of Justice, the central body of the Bahá’í Faith, when the arc of buildings on Mount Carmel were completed. The following words were read at the opening ceremony:

. . . the time has come when each human being on earth must learn to accept responsibility for the welfare of the entire human family. Commitment to this revolutionising principle will increasingly empower individuals and Bahá’í institutions alike in awakening others to . . . the latent spiritual and moral capacities that can change this world into another world.

(Universal House of Justice: 24 May 2001 in Turning Point page 164)

The Bahá’í perspective shares Ricard’s awareness of the need to link the local through the national to the global (Social Action):

No matter how essential, a process of learning at the local level will remain limited in its effectiveness if it is not connected to a global process concerned with the material and spiritual prosperity of humanity as a whole. Structures are required, then, at all levels, from the local to the international, to facilitate learning about development.

And the international Bahá’í community offers, though admittedly at a very early stage of development, a model for how this might be done, and acknowledges at the same time that this will be the work of centuries and requires the whole-hearted involvement of all humanity and not just the Bahá’í community (Century of Light – page 94):

The immediate responsibility of establishing world government rests on the shoulders of the nation-states. What the Bahá’í community is called on to do, at this stage in humanity’s social and political evolution, is to contribute by every means in its power to the creation of conditions that will encourage and facilitate this enormously demanding undertaking.

Only when enough of us have such a sense of powerful support and shared humanity does it seem to me that we can reach that tipping point, when most of the world of humanity will be prepared and able to put their weight effectively against the wheel of redemptive change, and only then will disaster be averted. Pray God that moment will not come too late for us.

I am grateful to Ricard for having researched so diligently the evidence to support the absolute need for an altruistic response that can work at the individual, national and global levels. Without a world-wide commitment to such a model it will be impossible to address humanity’s challenges effectively.

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Book Review (1/2): ‘Altruism’ by Matthieu Ricard – Toward a Caring Economy

The fourth Taráz concerneth trustworthiness. Verily it is the door of security for all that dwell on earth and a token of glory on the part of the All-Merciful. He who partaketh thereof hath indeed partaken of the treasures of wealth and prosperity. Trustworthiness is the greatest portal leading unto the tranquillity and security of the people. In truth the stability of every affair hath depended and doth depend upon it. All the domains of power, of grandeur and of wealth are illumined by its light.

(Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh – page 38)

Given the recent references to Ricard’s work it seems a good idea to republish this short sequence.

In October I posted a sequence of three articles reviewing the thinking of two contrasting writers: Timothy Snyder, an historian with an interesting message about the Holocaust and World War II in his book The Black Earth, and Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk and neuroscientist with an impassioned and well-documented plea for altruism in his book of the same name.

I felt that the sequence of posts failed to do justice to the depth and extent of Ricard’s case and am therefore revisiting the final few chapters of his book in an attempt to put that right. It’s only fair to add that his book covers so much ground that all I can convey of his wealth of detail is a faint impression.

The System

Ricard radically questions the operational model of our acquisitive society. We are not homo economicus (page 564), ‘selfish agents’ out to promote ‘their own interests.’ We are potentially homo reciprocans with a desire to ‘cooperate’ and consider ‘the benefits to the community’ in what we do. He quotes Amartya Sen who wrote (page 565): ‘Taking universal selfishness as read may well be delusional, but to turn it into a standard for rationality is utterly absurd.’

He first quotes (page 566) Milton Friedman’s purblind declaration that any other policy for corporate officials than maximising the dividends of stockholders would ‘undermine the very foundations of our free society.’ The word ‘free’ there is of course doubly ironic: those who pay the true price of our society are anything but free. Then he follows up with Frans de Waal’s damning analysis: ‘Every advanced nation has had major business scandals [over the last 10 years] and in every case executives have managed to shake the foundations of our society precisely by following Friedman’s advice.’

He argues the evidence strongly suggests that the kind of regulation libertarians fear is conducive to economic growth (page 571). Their fantasy of a ‘free market economy,’ far from being stable, leads to global crashes. He quotes the research of Thomas Picketty, which demonstrates that, even in-between crashes, none of the wealth realised by the elite trickles down to the less well off (page 572). And the unkindest cut of all came with 2008 crisis: bankers walked off with bonuses while others, lower down this disgraceful pecking order, lost their homes and/or their jobs (page 573). It is not without significance that, between 1998 and 2008, the financial sector spent 5 billion dollars lobbying politicians in the States (page 574).

Having painted a dark picture of the way our system has worked up till now – and believe me I have only picked out a tiny number of his main points in this summary – he moves onto possible solutions.

First of all, using the address of the economics professor, Dennis Snower, to the Global Economics Symposium in 2012, he homes in on (page 578) our need to take proper account of two issues.

One is ‘collective/public goods:’ these include democratic freedoms, the state of the environment, and natural resources.

The other is ‘poverty in the midst of plenty.’

There are major obstacles to addressing this effectively and Ricard is not blind to them (page 580):

. . . . . in a world where politicians aim only to be elected or re-elected, where financial interest groups wield a disproportionate influence on policy makers, where the well-being of future generations is often ignored since their representatives do not have a seat at the negotiating table, where governments pursue national economic policies that are to the detriment of the global interest, decision-makers have barely any inclination to create institutions whose goal would be to encourage citizens to contribute to collective wealth, which would serve to eradicate poverty.

Snower contends, and Ricard agrees with him and so do I, that reason alone will never get us beyond this point (page 581):

. . . . no one has been able to show that reason alone, without the help of some prosocial motivation, is enough to persuade individuals to widen their sphere of responsibility to include all those who are affected by their actions.

We have been here before of course on this blog, in the consideration of Jeremy Rifkin’s solution to a similar dilemma. In his book The Empathic Civilisation, because he does not accept that there is a God of any kind and contends that theology is suspect, he chose what he calls ‘biosphere consciousness’ as the motivating factor (page 432):

A globalising world is creating a new cosmopolitan, one whose multiple identities and affiliations spend the planet. Cosmopolitans are the early advance party, if you will, of a fledgling biosphere consciousness. . . .

For not dissimilar reasons perhaps in terms of persuading his readers, and obviously because he is a Buddhist, in his book Ricard chooses to advocate altruism (ibid):

Combined with the voice of reason, the voice of care can fundamentally change our will to contribute to collective goods. Such ideas echo the Buddhist teachings on uniting wisdom and compassion: without wisdom, compassion can be blind without compassion, wisdom becomes sterile.

He goes on to argue for (page 583) an ‘economics of reciprocity,’ and quotes various examples, such as the Mondragon Corporation (pages 584-86) where ‘the members of the cooperative (on average 80%-85% of the total number of workers at each company) collectively own and manage the company.’ The best paid earn only six times more than the lowest paid compared to the 400 times more in some American companies. The founding of the company dates back to 1956, and it is still going strong.

Ricard also discusses the value of ‘socially responsible investing’ (SRI). He does not see such approaches as flawless, explaining (page 593) that some such investors, while avoiding tobacco and armaments, will still put our money into oil, gas or pharmaceuticals. He argues for developing this further (page 594) into ‘positive economy stock exchanges,’ and feels progress in this direction is being made by such ventures as the Social Stock Exchange in London, which finally opened in 2103.

The Individual

We live in an economy (page 606) which, to quote Victor Lebrow, ‘needs things consumed, burned, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing rate. Tim Kasser’s research has demonstrated that consumerism reduces life satisfaction and habitual materialists (page 607) lack compassion, are exploitative of others and often lack close friends.

A particularly interesting set of findings that Ricard quotes, given the importance attached to trustworthiness in the Bahá’í Faith, concerns Denmark, where levels of satisfaction with living conditions is high (page 611):

It is not one of the world’s wealthiest countries, but there is very little poverty and inequality. [The high level of reported satisfaction] can be explained, among other things, by the high level of trust that people feel towards each other, including toward strangers and institutions: people’s natural instinct is to think that a stranger is kind. This trust goes hand-in-hand with a very low level of corruption.

Ricard raises the issue of ‘altruism for the sake of future generations.’ If we accept the reality of climate change, as most of us now do, our behaviour will unarguably affect our descendants for the worse if we do not change it. However, there are interesting dynamics at work here, rather similar to the one I have explored already in terms of prejudice.

South African Miner (for source of image see link)

When I was studying psychology for the first time in the 1970s I came across the work of Thomas Pettigrew, which is still referred to even now. It illustrates nicely the exact nature of the problem Ricard says we are still facing in terms of responding to climate change.

To put one set of his findings very simply, whether you were a miner in segregated West Virginia or apartheid South Africa, the culture around you differed depending on whether you were above ground or below it. Below ground discrimination was potentially dangerous so the culture there frowned on it: above ground the culture was discriminatory. What was particularly interesting to me was that 20% of people discriminated all the time regardless of the culture and 20% refused to do so at all ever: 60% of people shifted from desegregation below ground to segregation above it (the percentages are approximate: the pattern is accurate).

Ricard quotes the research of Kurzban and Houser (page 631-32). They conclude from their research that:

20% of people are altruists who bear the fortunes of future generations in mind and are disposed to altering their ways of consumption to avoid destroying the environment. . . . . .

[However], around 60% of people follow prevailing trends and opinion leaders, something that highlights the power of the herd instinct in humans. These ‘followers’ are also ‘conditional cooperators:’ they are ready to contribute to the public good on the condition that everyone else does likewise.

The final 20% are not at all inclined to cooperate and want more than anything to take advantage of all the opportunities available to them. They are not opposed to other people’s happiness in principle, but it is not their business.

This clearly indicates that reaching the tipping point, where most people have widened out their unempathic tunnel vision to embrace the whole of humanity and future generations in a wide-angled embrace, is some way off still. He goes on to outline the many practical steps that lie within our reach, such as recycling more of our waste metals and moving to hydrogen powered cars. Enough of us have to want to bring those steps into reality before change will occur at a fast enough rate.

And that issue will be the focus of next Monday’s post.

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Book Review – ‘The Seven Habits of Effective People’ (4/5): Empathy, Synergy and Interdependence

Bahá’ís assert that ever-increasing levels of interdependence within and between societies are compelling us to learn and exercise the powers of collective decision-making and collective action, born out of a recognition of our organic unity as a species.

(Michael Karlberg Beyond a Culture of Contest – page 131)

Given the recent references to Covey’s work it seems a good idea to republish this sequence.

At the end of the previous postBook Review – ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ (3/5): Integrity and Empathy I rashly promised that this one would seek to capture, amongst other things, how the close match between parts of Covey’s message and some aspects of the Bahá’í Faith combined to potentiate the transformative influence I have been attempting to describe so far.

A brief digression first.

Empathy & Compassion

What I think I have so far failed to fully appreciate is the extent to which my reading of Covey’s book at that period may have given me the capacity to realise, as touched on in the previous post, that my simply sitting there close to the pain of Laura’s traumatic insight, intensely, almost desperately seeking to understand was all that was required of me, was what she needed more than anything else at that precise moment. Rather melodramatically I expressed this, after another difficult session with another client in deep distress, as ‘bleeding with them in the hope that they would grow.’ I need to add that care needed to be taken not to join them completely in their immersion in pain and distress. That would entail a damaging loss of perspective as well as risking burnout. Rather it was developing an ability at second hand to experience and contain, rather than drown in their angst, so that constructive solutions could gradually be generated.

Hopefully I got close enough to at least one of the criteria for a successful connection with a traumatised person described by Peter Levin in his book In an Unspoken Voice: how the body releases trauma and restores goodness. He writes:[1]

Therapists must learn, from their own successful encounters with their own traumas, to stay present with their clients.

There will be more about this book in a later sequence, I suspect.

I was reminded, as I recently read Rutger Bregman’s book, of the distinction Matthieu Ricard makes between empathy and compassion:[2]

If someone who is in the presence of a suffering person feels an overwhelming distress, that can only aggravate the mental discomfort of a person suffering. On the other hand, if the person who comes to help is radiating kindness and gives off a peaceful calm, and can be attentive to the other, there is no doubt that the patient will be comforted by this attitude. Finally, the person who feels compassion and kindness can develop the strength of mind and desire to come to the aid of the other. Compassion and altruistic love have a warm, loving, and positive aspect that standalone empathy for the suffering of the other does not have.

Bregman explains Ricard’s other main point in simple terms:[3] empathy is feeling ‘with’ someone, whereas compassion is feeling ‘for’ them.

It’s probably useful to add that a diary entry from the following week indicates that the next session was far more positive.

Synergy and Interdependence

I’ve referred several times to Covey’s emphasis on synergy. We have now come to Habit 6, which unpacks exactly what he is getting and why it is so important.

Its main benefit is its creativity:[4]

In interdependent situations compromise is the position usually taken. Compromise means that 1+1 = 1 ½. Both give and take. The communication isn’t defensive or protective or angry or manipulative; it’s honest and genuine and respectful. But it isn’t creative or synergistic. It produces a low form of win/win.

Synergy means that 1+1 may equal 8, 16, or even 1,600. The synergistic position of high trust produces solutions better than any originally proposed and all parties know it.

He discusses the implications of this at some length, but I propose to focus on the section that most impressed me and which I have found most useful in practice: it’s titled Valuing the Differences. Given the emphasis Bahá’ís place on unity in diversity this may not be entirely surprising. Covey sees it as the core of synergy,[5] ‘Valuing the differences is the essence of synergy.’ What’s more his expansion of this point resonates with my own felt sense that all we each have is a simulation of reality: ‘the key to valuing those differences is to realise that all people see the world, not as it is, but as they are.’

Holding this truth in our hearts, in his view, makes us far more effective: ‘The person who is truly effective has the humility and reverence to recognise his own perceptual limitations and to appreciate the rich resources available through interaction with the hearts and minds of other human beings.’ As a description of one of the key reasons why the Bahá’í skill of consultation is so valuable, this could hardly be bettered.

What this amounts to is an indispensable precondition for progress in any field of human conflict:

. . . unless we value the differences in our perceptions, unless we value each other and give credence to the possibility that we’re both right, that life is not always a dichotomous either/or, that there are almost always third alternatives, we will never be able to transcend limits of that conditioning.

His diagram in this chapter[6] (see above) captures the importance of trust and cooperation in achieving synergy. Trustworthiness, in Bahá’í terms, is an essential characteristic that we should all be seeking to develop if we are to enhance our communities and create a better society.

In a previous post I had already vaguely grasped the link between synergy and interdependence. I was dealing with the Bahá’í process called consultation and referring first of all to Michael Karlberg’s Beyond a Culture of Contest, which argues that for the most part our culture’s processes are adversarial: our economic system is based on competition, our political system is split by contesting parties and our court rooms decide who has won in the battle between defence and prosecution.  The more valuable emphasis on a careful and dispassionate exploration of the truth is generally  conspicuous by its absence. The French courtroom is, apparently, one of the few exceptions.

The Bahá’í International Community explain how consultation helps us transcend our ‘respective points of view, in order to function as members of a body with its own interests and goals.’ They speak of ‘an atmosphere, characterized by both candour and courtesy’ where ‘ideas belong not to the individual to whom they occur during the discussion but to the group as a whole, to take up, discard, or revise as seems to best serve the goal pursued.’ At worst you get what Covey call ‘compromise’ solutions, and at best a synergy ‘win/win’ that transcends that.

What is intriguing, when I read this hindsight, is that Karlberg brings in  another key word here (my emphasis):[7]

Bahá’ís assert that ever-increasing levels of interdependence within and between societies are compelling us to learn and exercise the powers of collective decision-making and collective action, born out of a recognition of our organic unity as a species.

This strongly suggests that a sense of interdependence and the synergy it creates extends well beyond a family, a circle of friends or even a business venture, of the kind Covey often uses as an illustration of the power of his approach.

I’ve attempted to summarise all of what are for me Covey’s most important insights in this diagram:

Habit 7, Sharpening the Saw, I’ll ignore for present purposes. And I’ve recently discovered from a soon to be published book, The Secrets of True Happiness, by Farnaz, Bijan & Adib Masumian, that there is a Habit 8, explained in a book published in 2004 — The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. I can see another volume approaching to squeeze onto my creaking shelves.

In the final post I’ll take a helicopter look at what I continued to make of all this as the months and years rolled by.

References:

[1] In an Unspoken Voice – page 42.
[2]. From Altruism: the Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World – pages 58-63.
[3]. Humankind: a hopeful history – page 387.
[4]. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Page 271. Unless otherwise specified all the following quotations are from this book.
[5]. Page 277.
[6]. Page 270.
[7] Beyond a Culture of Contest – page 131.

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Book Review – ‘Nineteen’ (3/4): Altruism & Transcendence

At our celebration of the Twin Birthdays of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh this year, our Bahá’í community chose to include a prayer of the Báb part of whose ending reads as follows:

Now, in My thirtieth year, Thou beholdest Me, O My God, in this Grievous Mountain [Chihríq] where I have dwelt for one whole year.

Praise be unto Thee, O My Lord, for all times, heretofore and hereafter; and thanks be unto Thee, O My God, under all conditions, whether of the past or the future. The gifts Thou hast bestowed upon Me have reached their fullest measure and the blessings Thou hast vouchsafed unto Me have attained their consummation. Naught do I now witness but the manifold evidences of Thy grace and loving-kindness, Thy bounty and gracious favours, Thy generosity and loftiness, Thy sovereignty and might, Thy splendour and Thy glory, and that which befitteth the holy court of Thy transcendent dominion and majesty and beseemeth the glorious precincts of Thine eternity and exaltation.

This prayer was revealed after years of imprisonment. It triggered a consultation about how astonishing it is to find such words of gratitude flowing from the heart of someone who had suffered so much for so long. This is perhaps why the words of Adam Robarts resonated so strongly with me when I read them later:[1]

Gratitude comes more easily when we are comfortable and things are going smoothly. Gratitude for our tests and difficulties requires higher consciousness.

We discussed in the previous post some of the ways in which consciousness can be raised to higher levels. Now we find ourselves encountering others.

Altruism

At one point in his narrative Robarts triggered a particularly moving memory of something I am sure I read but can’t now find. He described Haydn as[2] quietly turning to his mother and saying, ‘“Mummy, I hope it’s okay, but when we were praying, I asked God to give Uncle Paul my health and to give me Uncle Paul’s cancer.” About a week later, we received the sad news that Paul had passed away. Karyn and I never forgot this extraordinary selflessness on the part of our precious Haydn.’ I am convinced that I learned, many years ago, that C.S. Lewis, as his wife was suffering from the cancer that finally killed her, prayed that he be allowed to bear her pain so that she could be spared that at least.

Robarts then goes on to explore where such selflessness leads. He quotes psychology researcher Abigail Marsh as recognising that:[3] although ‘compassion is a key driver of altruism, her research indicates that “the brains of highly altruistic people are different in fundamental ways.” He explains:

Marsh’s research uses brain imaging studies to demonstrate that the size of the amygdala, that part of the brain that recognizes fearful expressions, is about 20% smaller than average among psychopaths and children/adolescents with severe conduct problems and limited empathy. In contrast, the amygdalas of altruistic people—kidney donors being the subjects used in Marsh’s research—are about 8% larger than average. Marsh is convinced that “the roots of altruism and compassion are just as much a part of human nature as cruelty and violence, maybe even more so.”

Matthieu Ricard, in his richly rewarding exploration of altruism, quotes the research of Kurzban and Houser.[4] They conclude from their research that:

20% of people are altruists who bear the fortunes of future generations in mind and are disposed to altering their ways of consumption to avoid destroying the environment. . . . . .

[However], around 60% of people follow prevailing trends and opinion leaders, something that highlights the power of the herd instinct in humans. These ‘followers’ are also ‘conditional cooperators:’ they are ready to contribute to the public good on the condition that everyone else does likewise.

The final 20% are not at all inclined to cooperate and want more than anything to take advantage of all the opportunities available to them. They are not opposed to other people’s happiness in principle, but it is not their business.

Even so Rifkin, in his advocacy of empathy, clearly feels it’s the best hope we’ve got, even though one of his key witnesses wasn’t sure where empathy comes from:[5]

Although the origins of man’s capacity for empathy was a mystery to Schopenhauer, the teleology was clear. By feeling another’s plight as if it were our own and by extending a hand to comfort and support them in their struggle to persevere and prosper, we recognise the unifying thread that connects each of us to the other and all of life on earth.

I am well aware though, from reading Goleman and Davidson’s book on The Science of Meditation, that the road from the transient state of mind we call compassion to the enduring trait of character we label altruism requires long and sustained effort over months and years.

Transcendence

Robarts clearly is aware that above and beyond that something else is required, something we could call a sense of the divine perhaps:[6]

. . . Arnold Toynbee published An Historian’s Approach to Religion. Toynbee notes that one can distill a common faith experience, described as the “spiritual presence,” from the diversity of beliefs and practices across all religions. It is the transforming influence of this “presence” in these religions that leads to an “act of self-sacrifice”—the process of “giving up selfcenteredness” and focusing one’s life on a new center: the Absolute Reality and spiritual presence behind these religions.

At leasst one incident in the family’s journey hints at glimpses we sometimes get of what lie beyond:[7]

On May 17, two days before he passed away, Haydn pointed into the air with a shaking hand and asked Karyn in a whisper, “Is that your family?” Karyn’s answer was brilliant; simply, “It could be!”

This connects with my investigations into various near death experiences (NDEs). The most dramatic of them helped convince an originally sceptical Bruce Greyson to endorse the possibility of life after death.

In my review of his book I wrote:

What details does the experience of an NDE provide that suggest it is authentic? There is a significant amount of such evidence, involving more rigorously controlled examples of the ‘stain on the tie’ phenomenon that initially dented Greyson’s scepticism. I’ll quote only one example here:[8]

“[Al, a subject in a carefully constructed study] said that he saw his chest held open by metal clamps, and two other surgeons working on his leg. That puzzled him, because his problem was with his heart and he didn’t expect anyone to be messing with his leg. In fact, the surgeons were at that time stripping a vein out of his leg to be used to create a bypass graft for his heart. That detail clearly established that Al had been completely unconscious when he’d witnessed the cardiac surgeon flapping his arms.

All the measures indicated that his brain was completely inactive at this point.

Attempts to provide an even more rigorous methodology may have failed, not because the NDEs were inauthentic but because the methods adopted were inappropriate to the task. A good example is the idea of placing targets close to the ceiling in the hope that experiencers would spot them. Consultations with a group of NDE experiencers flagged up the problem with this approach very clearly and, in my view, convincingly. Greyson described what happened:[9]

When I discussed [my] research findings at a conference attended by a large number of people who had had NDES, they were astounded at what they considered my naivety in carrying out this study. Why, they argued, would patients whose hearts had just stopped and who were being resuscitated – patients who were stunned by their unexpected separation from their bodies – go looking around the hospital room for a hidden image that has no relevance to them, but that some researcher had designated as the “target”?

This resonates with what Julie Beischel writes in Leslie Kean’s Surviving Death about mediumship studies:[10]

The analogy I like to use is that a mediumship study in which the environment is not optimised for mediumship to happen is akin to placing a seed on a tabletop and then claiming the seed is a fraud when it doesn’t sprout.

And moreover,[11] ‘[p]eople who have had NDEs often examine their experience again and again, in order to seek and develop insight into the meaning of the experience,’ and they are usually life-enhancing:

NDEs usually lead to an enhanced sense of meaning and purpose in life, increased joy in everyday things, decreased fear of death, and a greater sense of the interconnectedness among all people. As a result, people who have NDEs often become less absorbed in their own personal needs and concerns and more altruistic and compassionate towards others.

And such beliefs are not incompatible with science in any way, as Robarts indicates:[12]

Suffice to say, though, some of the most brilliant scientists of the past two hundred years—including Newton, Einstein, Hawking, to name only some—have considered, with differing degrees of conviction, that it is not entirely delusional to posit a reality that does not need to be defined or bound by time, or by space, or by space-time.

Sadly too many so-called scientists are still stuck in the dogmatic fundamentalist materialism that prevents their allowing for even the faintest possibility of an afterlife, as my most recent purchase, Being You by Anil Seth on the topic of consciousness, painfully demonstrates. Right from the start his account is littered with dispiriting assumptions such as[13] ‘the total oblivion of death,’ and[14] ‘when life ends, consciousness will end too.’ He completely dismisses the possibility that NDEs and out-of-body experiences genuinely suggest at least some degree of mind/brain independence:[15]

People have had real out-of-body experiences for millennia, but this does not mean that immaterial selves or immutable souls have ever actually left any physical bodies.

Admittedly he does whisper a caveat at one point when he writes (My emphasis)[16] ‘the notion that there is a single unique conscious self (a soul?) that persists overtime may be grossly mistaken.’ Any awareness that such experiences can be objectively corroborated is completely and mistakenly absent.

Such evidence is even more brusquely dismissed in a paper quoted by Jeffrey Mishlove in his essay on NDEs and related phenomena:[17]

For example, a recent article by two prominent psychologists, Arthur Reber and James Alcock, in The Skeptical Inquirer makes their profoundly unscientific “skeptical” position clear when they claim:

Parapsychological claims cannot be true … the data are irrelevant.24

I found such a degree of a priori dismissiveness barely credible so I decided to check the source. The immediate context reads:

. . . parapsychology’s claims cannot be true. The entire field is bankrupt—and has been from the beginning. Each and every claim made by psi researchers violates fundamental principles of science and, hence, can have no ontological status.

We did not examine the data for psi, to the consternation of the parapsychologist who was one of the reviewers. Our reason was simple: the data are irrelevant. We used a classic rhetorical device, adynaton, a form of hyperbole so extreme that it is, in effect, impossible. Ours was “pigs cannot fly”—hence data that show they can are the result of flawed methodology, weak controls, inappropriate data analysis, or fraud. Examining the data may be useful if the goal is to challenge the veracity of the findings but has no role in the kinds of criticism we were mounting. We focused not on Cardeña specifically but on parapsychology broadly. We identified four fundamental principles of science that psi effects, were they true, would violate: causality, time’s arrow, thermodynamics, and the inverse square law.

I am not competent to judge the potential value of their argument’s basis in the three last principles they quote, but I do feel able to take issue with their causality case. They write:

Effects have causes. Bridging principles identify the causal links for observed effects. The appropriate response to circumstances that lack such a mechanism is skepticism or an existential agnosticism—and, historically, this has been the case. Newton’s notion of gravity as “action at a distance” was considered suspect until rescued by Einstein’s relativity theory; mystics’ claims to control autonomic functions were thought to be scams until the discovery of biofeedback; Wegener’s theory of continental drift was viewed skeptically until mid-ocean ridges and sea-floor spreading were discovered.

Firstly, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However, they fail to notice that their subsequent examples confirm this principle. Later research, they assert, found a causal bridge in each example that they quote.

They apparently fail to see that a healthy scepticism and appropriate degree of agnosticism do not equate to a contemptuous and dogmatic a priori denial of validity, so strong that, if as prevalent as is currently the case, would damagingly deter the vast majority of scientists from being seen to go anywhere near the data, let alone to seek to generate more of their own – their credibility and career prospects would be placed in jeopardy. It could, in effect, prevent an Einstein or a Wegener of the future ever finding a causal connector. How scientific would that be?

I suspect, perhaps incorrectly, that their other three principles could fall at similar fences if I had the knowledge to discover them.

Let’s move on to something more uplifting – no more of any dispiriting dogmatism.

Bruce Greyson’s trigger moment, described in his book After, is a graphic example of the kind of black swan Reber and Alcock are trying to bleach out of existence. Fifty years ago, at the start of his career in psychiatry, Greyson’s default scepticism received a resounding blow. A patient called Holly had seen a conversation he’d had with her flat mate, Susan, in another room while she was still unconscious after a probable overdose. The torpedo point, in terms of his scepticism about such phenomena, was that she had seen the stain on his tie, now hidden behind his labcoat when he called in on her, from the spaghetti he’d splashed in his haste to respond to the emergency call he’d received in the staff canteen. The video below is of Jeffrey Mishlove’s interview with Greyson posted on New Thinking Allowed.

Next time we’ll take a look at some themes that emerged as Haydn moved towards the end of his journey in this material world.

References:

[1]. Nineteen – page 140.
[2]. Op. cit. – page 147.
[3]. Op. cit. – pages 149-50.
[4]. Altruism – page 631-32.
[5]. The Empathic Civilisation – page 350.
[6]. Nineteen – page 150.
[7]. Op. cit. – page 157.
[8]. After – page 68.
[9]. Op. cit. – page 68.
[10]. Surviving Death – page 172.
[11]. Op. cit. – page 88.
[12] Nineteen – page 186.
[13]. Being You – page 1.
[14]. Op. cit. – page 8.
[15]. Op. cit. – pages 158-59.
[16]. Op. cit. – page 4, my emphasis.
[17]. Beyond the Brain:
The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death – page 12.

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