The Mind/Brain Question of Consciousness
I am behind in writing, but not behind in my fascination with our Summer Book read, AFTER, by Dr. Bruce Greyson. Chapters 8-13 go deep into Dr. Greyson’s attempts to prove that Near Death Experiences (NDEs) are real, and I feel that the book could also have a sub-sub title about how to prove that “yoga experiences” are also real. I have found myself contemplating this book so much in regard to yoga that I wrote Prashant Iyengar for his thoughts. He speaks to folks around the world on ZOOM through IYNAUS every Saturday morning and is open to any questions.
The big questions that Dr. Greyson continues to tackle are: Are NDEs just figments of imagination or delusion, and if not, then can we explain the brain chemistry of them? I like the quote that Dr. Greyson uses in Chapter 8 from Neil deGrasse Tyson –“Objective truth is the kind of truth science discovers. And it’s the kind of truth that is true whether or not you believe in it. It exists outside of your culture, your religion, your political affiliation.” The foundation and first limb of Yoga as given in The Yoga Sutras of Patanajali are The Yamas (II.30-31), the great Universal Vows that are specifically stated to be “unconditioned by place, time, and class”. Patanjali’s Yoga lays out a clearly observable step-by-step path toward a spiritual end. And, BKS Iyengar was very clear that Yoga is a science, art, and philosophy able to be practiced and experienced by everyone despite their culture, religion, or political affiliation.
Science has come a long way in mapping what the physical brain is responsible for and how it works to collect and process information. Can NDEs just be the effect of the brain shutting down? Is a certain part of the brain activated in times of this particular stress, raising certain hormones that could cause a NDE? As far as Dr. Greyson’s research goes, the answer has so far been “no”. Brain electrical activity is seen to stop before the heart and blood pressure end. And, though NDEs seem to leave a majority of experiencers with a sense of peace, decreased oxygen to the brain in general produces combativeness and agitation in most patients. The memories related to fantasy, imagination, and dreaming fade and typically occur in specific areas of the brain, while NDEs are experienced as REAL (most say “realer than real”) events that are recalled as such without fading and with non-specific brain activity.
This leads to the next question. IF the physical BRAIN is not responsible for the NDE, then how is the MIND able to recall and recount this experience? What is the difference between the physical brain and the experiencing mind? This is the foundational question of “what and where is consciousness?”. Greyson quotes a philosophy professor saying “After decades of concerted effort on the part of neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers, only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious – how it gives rise to sensation, feeling, subjectivity – has emerged unchallenged: we don’t have a clue”. And quotes a physicist saying “Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we can know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot.” It is clear no one asked a yogi.
Many of the experiences from NDEs that Dr Greyson has already described can be found as siddhis (naturally super powers) in the third chapter of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Experiences like these have been recounted by practiced yogis for thousands and thousands of years. Our “Truth” according to Yoga is pure consciousness (purusa) untouched by the ever-changing Nature of a life (Prakrti). Unfortunately, we identify more readily with the ever-changing matter of Nature than we do with our pure consciousness, so yoga is the journey back to knowing our Truth, clear of the disruptions, stresses, and attachments of the ever-changing Nature.
Yoga Sutras I.2-I.4 give the definition and explanation of Yoga. They state that Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of our mind. When yoga is achieved, we are able to know our own True Nature as that pure clear consciousness of purusa. But, at all other times we identify with and are caught up in all the fluctuations of Prakrti and forget our True Nature of consciousness. In Chapter 11 of AFTER, there are clear descriptions and recounts of NDEs that give these Yoga Sutras some merit.
“As part of me realized I was about to die, I began shouting to myself over and over to do something – anything…Then, this subtle shift happened. I seemed to change points of view, as if I was changing location in a room. One second, I was the terrified person; and then I was the other calm one ‘watching’ the terrified one. I was both and yet not. The ‘real’ I was the calm one, but I had always identified myself as the other until now…I allowed my true nature to express itself again.”
“Imagine, if you will, a huge, dark warehouse. You live there with only one flashlight to see by…You can only see what your light is focused on, and only identify that which you already know. Next, imagine that one day, someone flicks on a switch…you can see the entire warehouse, and its nothing like anything you’d ever imagined…You understand that what you used to think was your reality was, in fact, hardly a speck within the vast wonder that surrounds you.”
I am reminded of the “Cosmic Vision” in the yogic text, The Bhagavad Gita, when Arjuna is shown the Truth of Krishna’s Divine Nature. It is overwhelming and contains EVERYTHING in the Universe. Our small, grey matter brain is not what makes us conscious, but is only a filter. As a physician, Larry Dossey puts it, “We are conscious not because of the brain but in spire of it.” Consciousness is what gives us the experience of LIFE! But then, what happens when the body does indeed die? Do NDEs give us any glimpse of what happens in the AFTER-life?
Despite any specific religious beliefs or cultural norms, it seems that those who have experienced a NDE overwhelmingly believe that physical death is not the end – that consciousness does move on past physical death. And, though a majority of those who report a NDE do report a sense of peace and calm, that is not the case with EVERY NDE. Pleasant or not, “heaven” or “hell”, it is clear that the AFTER-life may not be a “place” really separate from what we live in now. As in the above warehouse metaphor, there is always more than what meets our own individual eye or brain while living in the confines of our physical brain and body. Outside of those constraints, there is an infinite vastness, “outside of time”. Dr. Greyson leaves us at the end of Chapter 13 with the possibility that “what experiencers call the ‘spiritual world’ is not in fact a different physical location but rather a different aspect of our familiar world that we normally don’t see”.
Yoga would agree. The pure consciousness of purusa and the ever-changing Nature of Prakrti are eternally paired with no beginning and no end. Bodies are put on to learn and discern, taken off at death for the next life or the next…until we once again remember and reside in our own True Nature.
