Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: Consciousness is not what we think (video)

Monday, August 21, 2023

Consciousness is not what we think (video)

Annaka Harris, Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, 2/11/20; Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

The phsyical heart is closer to the seat of consciousness than the brain between the ears.

Buddha's Brain (Dr. Rick Hanson, Ph.D.)
Science is finally catching up to Buddhism (Abhidharma), realizing the unbelievable fact that "there is no self" because all things are impersonal. (Mahayana Buddhists hedge this powerful insight by saying there is a self, even a higher self as in Hinduism, but it is interdependent; in other words, "there is no separate self." That makes it sound like there is no self separate from other selves, as in "We are all One," rather than what is really being said, which is that there is no ego, soul, self, personality, being because what appears to be the atta or atman (self) is completely dependent on Five Groups clung to as self: body, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness. The self is not a unity but a composite of ever-changing phenomena. Each of these groups or aggregates is composed of countless different elements grouped and classified according to their function. "Self" is a psycho-physical epi-phenomenon of rapidly arising and perishing particles (kalapas, form, body, composed of the four general qualities of ultimate materiality) and mind-moments (cittas, a stream of events that constitute awareness) that does not persist unchanged for even one moment because each composite arises, turns, and vanishes in three consecutive sub-moments that constitute one mind-moment. The same is true of each kalapa or ultimate particle, as explained in Buddhist physics in the Abhidhamma of the Pali canon. This is interesting because author Annaka Harris, the wife of prominent meditation proponent Sam Harris, almost certainly knows about the Buddhist position on these questions of ultimate reality.

Annaka Harris (née Gorton, born 1976) is an American writer whose work touches on meditation, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and consciousness. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind (2019). She is the wife of Sam Harris:
Samuel Benjamin Harris (born 1967) is an American neuroscientist, philosopher, author, and podcast host. His work touches on rationality, religion, ethics, freewill, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and AI. He came to prominence for his criticism of religion, Islam in particular, and is known as one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. His first book, The End of Faith (2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction and remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 33 weeks. He has since written six additional books: Letter to a Christian Nation in 2006, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values in 2010, the long-form essay Lying in 2011, the short book Free Will in 2012, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion in 2014.

The physical base of consciousness is near the heart.

Buddhism exhausts the topic of "consciousness" (vinnana), but for all that one is left with a definition of it as simply "awareness." It is also pursued as "mind" (mano), that which measures or reckons or compares (manas), subconscious (bhavanga), streams of "mind-moments" (cittas), and as an inseparable part of the Five Aggregates clung to as self, one of the four groups of "mental formations" (sankharas) -- and always, always an impersonal PROCESS (verb), never a static OBJECT (noun).

Here Harris, echoing this problem of getting a handle on a better definition, chooses to translate consciousness as "experience." That is not even as good as awareness. There are in Buddhism six kinds of awareness: consciousness associated with each of the five senses and consciousness associated with the sixth sense, "mind." (Some Western translators note that all that mind does is a version of the other five senses, or it remembers or projects the other five in their absence, but "mind objects" (dhammas) -- "things" that are not sights, sounds, tastes, tangibles, or fragrances -- like ideas are not taken in by any of the other senses, so it is its own sense door with its own objects.

Harris then makes a small advancement by making the distinction between "experience" (bare awareness) and "consciousness" in the sense of complex thinking or reasoning or self-reflection, which is actually what most of us think we're trying to get at when understanding or explaining consciousness. That kind of consciousness is not addressed, except that the Buddha defines it in extreme detail in the "Higher Doctrine" or "Doctrine in Ultimate Terms" (Abhidhamma) texts, exploring it like a dispassionate scientist from inside the experience then grasping it as impersonal (not-self).

This is going to hurt. Everything you think you know is false

Conscious: A Brief Guide (Annaka Harris)

(Tom Bilyeu) What if everything you think you know about yourself is wrong? Most of us have the intuition that we have a "self" that is separate from our body and brain and that we can control our experience with conscious will. But what if that isn’t true?

Bestselling author Annaka Harris is devoted to challenging our deepest intuitions about the nature of consciousness and the self.

We may not have free will but we had this child.

In this episode of Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu, she discusses experiments on the cutting edge of physics and neuroscience and explains why those experiments matter.

The result is a fascinating conversation that will leave you questioning some of our most cherished, comforting intuitions.

SHOW NOTES

Consciousness is exactly as mysterious as it seems to be [2:29]
Annaka defines what consciousness is [4:54]
Tom and Annaka discuss the story of Phineas Gage [6:31]
Annaka talks about the difference between consciousness and high-level thought [9:14]
There is a basic level of consciousness that doesn’t involve awareness of consciousness [11:35]
Challenging intuitions is a basic element of the scientific method [14:58]
Is there outer evidence of conscious experience? Is consciousness doing anything? [18:46]
Upending comfortable intuitions is eventually a freeing experience [20:57]
Annaka explains how the brain binds disparate signals to make them seem congruent [22:23]
Annaka and Tom discuss how much unconscious brain functioning we take for granted [27:09]
Annaka describes the false sense of self and conscious will [29:53]
We make decisions before we are aware of them [33:41]
Annaka discusses the question of whether or to what extent plants are conscious [35:30]
Trees take care of their own kin, and defend their kin [40:48]
What if consciousness is a field like gravity? [43:39]
Annaka describes the double-slit light experiment [46:13]
• The Double-slit experiment • Double-slit experiment explained!
Measuring an event can change the past [51:41]
Annaka discusses problems with the views that consciousness emerges from life [54:25]
Annaka shares the impact she wants to have on the world [1:03:06]

AUDIO: Author Annaka Harris on the topic of consciousness (Rich Roll)

QUOTES: “There’s something jarring about learning that the things that feel most true to you about reality are possibly not structured that way.” [21:29]

“We feel that consciousness is behind our willed actions, when in fact, there is a lot of neuroscience to suggest that it’s actually the reverse. It’s at the end. That all this processing happens, a decision gets made, and we’re kind of the last to know.” [31:54]

“We have no evidence that consciousness is due to complexity.” [1:00:24]

FOLLOW ANNAKA HARRIS: Website: annakaharris.com INSTAGRAM: bit.ly/392CIl1 FACEBOOK: bit.ly/2GTsk36 TWITTER: bit.ly/2RUoY63

BOOK: Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind [2:19]