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For more information, contact: Gary Schouborg, PhD (925) 932-1982 |
Schouborg, Gary (2000). "Critique of The Science of Enlightenment: Enlightenment,
Liberation and God — A Scientific Explanation, by Nitin Trasi."
Correspondence. Nitin, Thank
you for the review copy you sent me of your: The Science of Enlightenment:
Enlightenment, Liberation and God – A Scientific Explanation. New Delhi:
D.K. Printworld, 1999, xvi + 320 pp. ISBN 81-246-0130-5. My comments are
in two parts: the book's contributions and what remains for further inquiry. ContributionsThe
Science of Enlightenment provides a clear and systematic account of the Advaita Vedanta
experience of pure consciousness. You provide a clear phenomenology of
Enlightenment in common sense terms. By doing so, you go a long way toward
achieving your goal "to demystify the entire subject of
spirituality" (ix). Defining Enlightenment as seeing through the
illusion of a separate self, and Liberation as the result of Enlightenment,
you systematically and consistently weave those concepts throughout your
exposition. I
particularly liked your distinction between necessary and unnecessary
thinking, and their impact on unavoidable and avoidable suffering, respectively.
Necessary thinking is "essential for day-to-day functioning of the
individual (like crossing the road, or performing professional or technical
duties)" (30). Unnecessary thinking is related to the illusion of a
separate self, separate in two senses: "from the 'other' — which is the
rest of the world, and with separate interests"; and "imagined to
be distinct from, but inhabiting the body-mind complex" (31). I
profoundly agree that "ought" beliefs are a key example of
unnecessary thinking and a key cause of avoidable suffering, and that in some
sense Enlightenment is therefore "beyond morality" (88). Both your
distinction and your linking it to emotions (72) pave the way for explaining
how Enlightened Ones are not just passive creatures (65), but can participate
in the real world in a uniquely detached way (91), so that "the
Liberated One … lives in the everyday world, acting as if it is real, but
knowing that it is not fully so" (43). Your
constant linking of your own formulations to those of well-known seers is
illuminating in two ways: it clarifies their own statements and puts yours in
historical perspective. Page after page, I thought how nice it would have
been to have read your book at the beginning of my searching, how much
confusion I would have been saved. If your book goes into a second edition,
it would be helpful to include those sources in the Index. Particularly
insightful is your providing a naturalistic context within which to interpret
the sages that you quote, thereby demystifying their formulations. Just one
of many examples is your account of pure awareness (176-177). The
naturalistic framework that you previously set out makes persuasive, or at
least understandable, your interpretation of pure awareness not as some
meta-physical, disembodied consciousness, but simply as consciousness devoid
of unnecessary thinking. Similarly, throughout your book you make clear the
difference in meaning a particular passage will have for the Enlightened
compared to the average person. Your
naturalistic, demystifying approach thus provides for seekers a practical,
common sense understanding of the Enlightenment process. There are two
instances I particularly liked. First, you are the first person I've read who
asserts that one does not necessarily require a guru to experience
Enlightenment (129). I have always been chagrined to see authors flatly
assert that one is needed, apparently not realizing the question-begging
involved — if everyone needs a guru, where did the first guru come
from? Second, in spite of the unpredictability of Enlightenment, you make it
plausibly attainable by the Average Person and not just the spiritual genius.
(It is unpredictable since one cannot achieve it at will Future InquiryLet me
begin with a quibble over your claim to offer "for the first time a
completely cohesive theory explaining spirituality" (ix). Even though
you note some disagreement with Ken Wilber (175), I do not see how your
theory is more "completely cohesive" than his, which you quote
throughout your book. My
second quibble concerns your claim to offer a science of
Enlightenment. I see your book as offering a helpful phenomenology -- i.e., a
description of Enlightenment and related experiences. As such it is a
naturalistic account, meaning one that avoids unnecessary metaphysical
speculation and that adheres as closely as possible to human experience and
to the scientific criteria of logical coherence and testability. However,
although this paves the way for science, it is not yet itself science. There
is really little actual science in your book, only some loose, though
illuminating, references to it. Your references to quantum theory are speculative.
Your argument that pure awareness is a function of the thalamus (123) is less
so, but still is not scientifically convincing even though I find it
intuitively plausible. Your account of the correlation of different brain
waves with different conscious states (124-127) helps move us in the right
direction. In
other words, I do not think you have achieved your goal "to establish
that the phenomena of Enlightenment and Liberation do in fact exist, and that
they can be explained very well in medical and psychological terms" (4) You
have nicely articulated a theory of Enlightenment from the perspective of the
Advaita Vedanta experience of pure consciousness. However, along with it and
every other religious tradition, both East and West, you suffer from
conflating explanatory (ontological) and descriptive (phenomenological)
levels of assertion. Thus, at the very beginning you define "'consciousness
(with a small c) … as a function or property of the living human brain"
(2), which is an ontological claim about the nature of consciousness in
relation to other realities, in this case the brain. In the next breath, you
refer to consciousness "in the sense of being aware" (3), which is
a phenomenological claim about consciousness as we experience it. This
ambiguity allows you to make unsubstantiated (and in my view, insupportable)
statements about Consciousness (with a capital C) "to denote the
collective or Universal Consciousness" (3). Thus,
you argue that your central thesis that "'Consciousness is one' Although
I find your distinction between necessary and unnecessary thinking promising,
it requires further development. As I already mentioned, I agree that
"ought" beliefs are a key example of unnecessary thinking and a key
cause of avoidable suffering. Still to be done, however, is the philosophical
task of distinguishing various kinds of ought beliefs to see if perhaps some
are unnecessary and others not. For example, you yourself note that the
Enlightened One conducts daily life in a practical way, dealing effectively
and realistically with his "duties" (30, 62). Since a duty is
something one "ought" to do, to avoid inconsistency you need to
distinguish further among necessary and unnecessary duties or
"oughts". Distinguishing various kinds of desire will be similarly
useful, since you define desire as insisting on what "should A
further issue concerns the scope of the distinction between necessary and
unnecessary thinking, along with the correlative one between unavoidable and
avoidable suffering. I find the distinction very valuable for myself and
perhaps most other seekers. However, some Eastern writing suggests that any
pain whatever is avoidable if one is sufficiently skilled. For example, some
Enlightened Ones would feel no pain even if their foot were mangled. This
issue awaits empirical testing. Clarifying
your distinction between necessary and unnecessary thinking would also help
render more intelligible the traditional view that the Enlightened One's
"(adual) vision is not really a 'point of view' at all, it is the actual
reality itself" (56). If the vision is pure consciousness taken
literally, then it is phenomenologically true that there is no point
of view, but you provide no justification for leaping from that to the ontological
claim that the vision is of "actual reality itself". On the other
hand, if the vision is only devoid of unnecessary thinking, then wouldn't
necessary thinking have a point of view? After all, my daily functioning and
duties are mine, not someone else's. Conflating
the phenomenological and ontological leads you to three traditional, and
traditionally unsupported, assertions: consciousness exists in dreamless
sleep (95, 102); we are already Enlightened (105), it is our natural state
(186); material reality exists within Consciousness, not the other way
around (121-122). Consciousness
exists in dreamless sleep. As a phenomenological claim, this is self-contradictory, since
one cannot be simultaneously completely unconscious and conscious. As an
ontological claim it is unsupported. Ramana Maharshi's argument does not
follow, that our being able to say we were asleep shows that Consciousness
existed throughout the sleep (102). We can more readily and plausibly explain
our knowing we were asleep by current cognitive theory of identiiy
construction and physical continuity. We
are already enlightened, it is our natural state. This claim is stereotypical of
Eastern literature. As such, it is a variation of another: " Similarly,
although it is anathema in religious traditions to talk of Enlightenment as
an achievement, I am aware of only one reason against doing so: one cannot
decide to be Enlightened nor can one simply pursue some course of action that
will reliably produce Enlightenment. In other words, Enlightenment cannot be
produced by ego, where ego refers to executive functioning, which involves
conscious deliberation and choice. However, the same can be said of any
creative activity, since creativity comes from processes that are at a deeper
level in us than that of ego; they come from non-ego, unconscious processes
that we cannot directly influence by ego-level functioning. Thus, any
Enlightened One can legitimately be said to have achieved Enlightenment in
the sense that Enlightenment was developed from within that particular
body-mind complex. From
the preceding perspective, we can create a developmental theory of
Enlightenment that would involve, among other things, your own notion of
unnecessary thinking. "Ought" beliefs then become primitive
mechanisms by which the child incorporates her society's values. As she grows
in cognitive capacity, she is able to deal with social expectations in a more
objective manner, identifying what is important to her as well as to others,
and deciding what to do about it. This is not a matter simply of
"de-automisation" (87) and returning to some natural Enlightened
state, but of growing cognitively and emotionally. It is an achievement, but
one involving much more than ego. Material
reality exists within Consciousness, not the other way around. The issue here, like the one
of normalcy, concerns perspective. Material reality is said to exist within
Consciousness for at least two reasons. First, the problem of explaining how
consciousness emerges from matter seems unsolvable. However, by the same
token, no one has ever explained how material reality emerges from
Consciousness. Nor are they likely to, since that problem is the mirror image
of the other, and both involve the inexplicable conceptual gap between
consciousness and matter. Exchanging one mystery for another solves nothing,
so, again, to be scientific we must identify the comparative
advantages of the different perspectives. Consider
mystics who take Pure Consciousness to be a literal event, so that there is
no awareness of material reality, and who prize that Pure Consciousness
Experience more than any other. For them, the assertion expresses their
priority: they prefer Consciousness over materiality. Furthermore, from that
perspective, they regard material reality as periodically barging in on their
bliss, so that it is materiality rather than Consciousness that must explain
itself. In
contrast, there are the mystics whom you say are the truly Enlightened Ones.
They engage in our ordinary world. Now in that world, only some material
things seem to enjoy consciousness. And we ourselves are conscious only part
of our lives. What seems constant here is materiality, from which
consciousness emerges periodically. Here, it is more natural to think of
consciousness existing within the material world. Indeed, this is the
perspective that science has adopted, to its great advantage. The
second reason for holding material reality to exist within Consciousness is
related to "ought" beliefs. Our happiness is significantly
(totally?) influenced by our attitudes ("ought" beliefs and
preferences). In this sense, mental functioning has priority over material
reality for having the more influence of the two on our happiness. However,
that is an axiological and epistemological claim, not the ontological one
that you and the tradition have expressed. Concerning
your chapters on immortality and God, let me just note that they follow
straightforwardly from your premises, and as such share in those assumptions'
advantages and disadvantages, which I hope I have successfully identified. Finally, three incidental commentsI like
your characterization of the Enlightened One as letting go of fleeting
emotion (85-87, 95), but wonder if it is really as black and white as you
suggest. Your distinction (97) between planning (OK) and worry (not OK) is
worthwhile, but requires further development. For example, suppose I am
rehearsing behavior to cope with a possible future event about which I am
anxious. It seems to me that would involve worry, since the anxiety would not
quickly come and go, but would remain as long as I am doing the rehearsing /
planning. Still, it would be constructive because it would be preparing for
something I can do something about. Destructive worry would seem to be
remaining anxious about something that I cannot bring myself to admit I can
do nothing about. If to all that, you say that anxiety is never an emotion
that an Enlightened One would have, then please explain to me why anger is (110). You
characterize the separate self as "the feeling of separateness from the
rest of the universe" (71; see 99, 105, 109, 111 for similar
formulations). Since the Enlightened One functions seamlessly in the ordinary
world, the feeling of separateness must be different from a sense of
distinctness, which is necessary for practical functioning. For example, I am
aware that I am writing to you. What then is the difference
between an illusory feeling of separateness and a realistic sense of
distinctness? You
have limited your discussion of the unconscious to the dynamic unconscious
(96-97). However, most of our thinking is unconscious, but does not fit
within psychodynamic theories. In this regard, I think you might like Baars,
Bernard J. (1988). A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Nitin,
I hope it is clear to you that, although I've spent a great deal more time on
Future Inquiry than on your Contributions, that the former was not possible
without the latter. For me, my Future Inquiry comments have clarified a
number of issues that I've been working on and that I intend to develop
further in a naturalistic, developmental theory of enlightenment. Your own
clearly laid out and consistent thinking provided a wonderful platform for me
to do so, for which I am very grateful. Gary
Schouborg Walnut
Creek, CA Click here for Nitin
Trasi's home page |
