THE TRANSCENDENT BRAIN

I read this little book twice and enjoyed the easy clarity of expression, as well as some familiar subject matter lightly presented. Lightman is evidently an accomplished writer with some 20 books to his credit. A Cal. Tech. physicist by training, he was the first academic to receive a dual faculty appointment in science and the humanities at MIT. Therein, it seems, we have a clue to Lightman’s message. He claims to be a spiritual materialist (his italics). We hear much of the two cultures dichotomy between scientism on the one hand and the arts and humanities on the other; or put another way between those who hold that all can be explained via materialism and those who regard diverse non-material subtle energies as real and evidence of other realities, sometimes considered spiritual, especially in the case of Transformative Spiritual Experiences (TSE) that induce shifts in consciousness that change one’s world view.

On the face of it, Lightman’s subtitle “spirituality in the age of science” acknowledges the reality of spirituality as a facet of human experience: i.e., not some illusory epiphenomenon of the brain. However, he then goes on to say he is a materialist (Chapter 2 is entitled “A brief history of materialism”) who believes consciousness can be explained as some form of higher-level brain function and intelligence. He does not equate this with the integral consciousness structure (Gebser and Wilber) but does say he holds that there is a hierarchy of complexification of “different levels” of consciousness throughout evolution. Lightman says he has been attacked by “neo atheists” like Dawkins for being an apologist for “fuzzy” thinkers. Longman picks interesting subjects, beginning, in Chapter 1 with Moses Mendelsohn of whom he writes “no other philosopher or theologian in the history of recorded thought has argued so rationally for the existence of the soul, the prime example, after God, of the nonmaterial.” Chapter 1 is in fact entitled “the Ka and the Ba” referring respectively to the Egyptian nonmaterial body and the unique individual personality.

He also refers to the hun; the Chinese soul that leaves the body after death. He later quotes Colin McGinn that perhaps there is a hidden “structure of consciousness” that we do not understand and that “consciousness is an experience fundamentally beyond the capability of the human mind to fathom.” (They are not alone in intimating what we don’t know). But he then goes on to say, without any compelling explanation, that “consciousness is associated with some neurons and not others…[as] … further evidence of its material basis.” In Chapter 3 (“Neurons and I”) Lightman pays lip service to some of the materialist consciousness commentators such as Christof Koch and Francis Crick, citing quantitative statistics on relative brain size of humans and the extraordinarily large number (100 billion) of neurons which Koch concludes will help us understand the material basis of consciousness…[when we have] …a much deeper appreciation of how highly connected networks of a large number of heterogeneous neurons work." (Koch does not say when!) Regarding levels of consciousness, Lightman comes up with a rather weak and too simplistic hierarchy: Rudimentary (microorganisms), First Level (worms, etc.,), Second Level (vertebrates), Human Consciousness. Lightman spoke to Koch of his several transcendent experiences, Koch’s reply was to willingly admit that these are “real” experiences which he is happy to call “mystical experiences” and that they are brain experiences. (But, I interject, such “real” experiences are not reported as brain /neuron experiences but rather as much more oceanic universal experiences in which the “I” is not involved).

Perhaps I am reading too much between the lines, but it seems that there is a growing acceptance among avowed but nonmilitant materialists that spirituality is “real”. I even sense that avowed neo atheists like Dawkins feel a little crestfallen when they read the cosmologists who wax lyrical about their awe and wonder in the face of the majesty of the universe. It is as if they have backed themselves into a corner and feel they must affirm that they can still experience awe and transcendence, while still explaining these dimensions in purely materialistic terms. Put another way, these neo-atheists may have realised that they have overstepped their bounds in dismissing the non-material dimensions of existence, which their ideology denies. So, they talk themselves out of more serious debate in which others can engage.

These are not precisely Lightman’s sentiments, but he does report debating Dawkins’ who resorted to his intransigent ‘religion is nonsense’ position. In Chapter 4 (“To see the world in a grain of sand”) Lightman uses the term “nonreligious spirituality,” which reminds me of William Irwin Thompson’s “post religious spirituality,” and speaks of spiritual experiences as “the most memorable moments of our lives.” He reminds us of Erich Fromm’s term Biophilia as an expression for our love for nature in which we are enmeshed, and agrees: Our aesthetic of beauty is literally an expression of our oneness with nature (his italics). He quotes those who have attempted to define awe as “the inability to assimilate an experience into current mental structures” and regards this as close to his definition of spirituality. I was reminded of John O’Donohue when Lightman writes “when we open ourselves to the world and pay homage to that which is larger than ourselves we receive a blessing form the outer world. We get something back.” Here “openness” is evidently important as it is “a willingness to embrace something outside ourselves.”

The final Chapter (5) “My atoms and yours” (subtitled “Science and spirituality in the world of today”) is brief and attempts to restate Lightman’s “final portrait of spiritual materialism.” It does little to embellish points made earlier and I would leave it to readers as to evaluate his attempts to define what he calls spiritualism materialism. My take is that the book underscores the reality of science and spirituality as perennial phenomena in the world of today and that Lightman has struggled to recognise or explain how one might reconcile the simplified scientism – spirituality divide which has dominated the dichotomy of the two cultures debate. The important thing may be that Lightman has tried, and that the reconciliation sentiments represent a real shift in taking spirituality seriously even in traditional scientific circles.