Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

Such an alternative research program should be welcomed. Those who hold that mind and consciousness are produced, as emergent properties, from the matter in the neuronal circuitry of the brain are faced with major difficulties. They have not been able to explain in any detailed and convincing way how molecules interacting with each other according to known physical laws produce consciousness. This has led some researchers (Griffin 1997, p. 132) to propose that material atoms have, among other intrinsic properties, some slight degree of consciousness. When combined together these slight bits of consciousness can, some suggest, combine to form the intense and highly concentrated consciousness that we all experience. This idea is called panexperientialism. But if each atom possesses only a dim awareness, of what would it be aware? Most likely, an atom would only be aware of the atoms in its immediate neighborhood. Exactly how this local dim awareness of other atoms could transform into a concentrated, individualized, global awareness is not specified in any convincing way.

Griffin (1997, p. 133), following the philosophy of Alfred north Whitehead, and the earlier philosophy of Leibniz, suggests that “a multiplicity of individuals at one level can be subordinated to a ‘dominant’ individual with a higher level of experience and greater power.” The idea seems to be that among all the individual atoms in the human body, each with its own little bit of awareness, there is one dominant atom with a much higher level of awareness, to which the others are subordinated. This takes one beyond the normal panexperientialism, and introduces something very akin to the atma , the unit of individual consciousness in the vedic model. By introducing a quite radical distinction between the properties of different kinds of material particles, Griffin inadvertently reintroduces the matter/consciousness dualism he sought to avoid by his panexperientialist idea.

A “dualistic” atomic panexperientialism of this kind is potentially compatible with the vedic model. According to Mantra 35 of the Brahma Samhita, a Sanskrit hymn to the universal creator, the Supersoul or paramatma enters into each atom. In a conversation with his disciples in London (August 17, 1971), my guru A. c. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada explained that an individual soul or atma is also present in the atom along with the paramatma (conversations 1988, v. 2, p. 351). The bodies of living things would thus contain many atoms, each with soul and Supersoul. But the expression of the soul’s consciousness is heavily covered in this condition. The bodies of living things would also contain a dominant soul-Supersoul pair that would be the soul and Supersoul not of a single atom but of the complete organism, giving the organism as a whole a developed individual consciousness connected to the global consciousness of God.

Some scientists suppose that consciousness may be a quantum mechanical effect. These scientists include physicist david Bohm, physiologist Karl Pribram, nobel-prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson, mathematician Sir Roger Penrose, and neuroscientist Benjamin Libet. Stuart Hameroff, an anesthesiologist at the University of Arizona, has called attention to tiny structures called microtubules in brain cells as possible centers of quantum effects related to the generation of consciousness (Radin 1997, pp. 284–285). But there is no proof that consciousness is associated with microtubules in brain cells. furthermore, left unexplained is why consciousness, of all things, should emerge as a result of a quantum mechanical effect in structures composed of ordinary molecules. At present, quantum mechanics says nothing about the origin of consciousness. Radin (1997, p. 287) points out: “An adequate theory of psi . . . will almost certainly not be quantum theory as it is presently understood. Instead, existing quantum theory will ultimately be seen as a special case of how nonliving matter behaves under certain circumstances. Living systems may require an altogether new theory.”

Physicist Helmut Schmidt did some of the original psi experiments with random number generators. As we have seen, RnGs use radioactive decay to interrupt streams of alternating ones and zeros. These radioactive decays are the result of quantum jumps in the states of atoms, causing the emission of electrons. Because these emissions are, according to quantum theory, random, the sequence of ones and zeros picked out by the emissions should also be random. This means that over time there should be fifty percent ones and fifty percent zeros. But in his experiments Schmidt found that by mental efforts subjects could cause an increase in either ones or zeros, beyond what could be expected by chance. Schmidt said (1993, p. 367): “The outcome of quantum jumps, which quantum theory attributes to nothing but chance, can be influenced by a person’s mental effort. This implies that quantum theory is wrong when experimentally applied to systems that include human subjects.” In other words, quantum theory is in this case wrong, because its predictions do not apply to the random number generator experiments. Schmidt added, “It remains to be seen whether the quantum formalism can be modified to include psi effects.” It is doubtful that this can ever be achieved. This suggests the incompleteness of quantum mechanics as a description of reality. Accordingly, it may never be possible to give some simple set of equations that explains everything in the universe. Quantum mechanics may have its applications for a certain subset of reality, but it is not all encompassing. The goal of a mathematical theory of everything may therefore be forever beyond reach.

Any material explanation of consciousness, as an emergent property of neurons or as a quantum mechanical effect connected with microtubules in neurons, must confront the changeability of these brain components. The brain contains about 10 billion neurons. Each of these has about ten thousand connections with other neurons. Each day, a human loses an average of one thousand neurons in the brain (Radin 1997, p.

259). That consciousness and its mental contents can maintain their integrity in the face of such massive random disruptions in the brain circuitry that supposedly creates consciousness requires quite a leap of faith. It is more reasonable to suppose that the unitary consciousness of a living entity is an irreducible feature of reality and that it simply uses the brain as an instrument.

The interactions of matter, mind, and consciousness appear to sometimes violate the kind of bottom-up causation now generally favored by reductionist science. According to reductionist science, we start with molecules, and from molecules come mind and consciousness. Radin (1997, p. 260) and other researchers propose that living systems participate in a system with both upward and downward causation, in which states of matter can influence the states of mind and consciousness and vice versa. Radin (1997, p. 261) proposes that a comprehensive model of this causal system “might place quantum or subquantum physics at the bottom and a ‘spirit’ or ‘superspirit’ at the top.” This echos the vedic model, which does indeed place a “superspirit” at the top of the model (i.e. the paramatma, or Supersoul).

Radin gives this characterization of an adequate physical theory of living systems: “The theory will have to explain how information can be obtained at great distances unbound by the usual limitations of space or time . . . Such a theory must also explain not only how one can get information from a distance in space or time, but also how one can get particular information . . . The theory must account for why we are not overwhelmed with information all the time . . . The theory must also explain how random processes can be tweaked by mental intention . . . The theory of psi should explain phenomena associated with evidence suggesting that something may survive bodily death. These phenomena include apparitions, hauntings, out-of-body experiences (OBE), and near-death experiences (ndE) . . . The theory may need to account for poltergeist phenomena, which provide the primary evidence for large-scale mindmatter interaction effects” (Radin 1997, pp. 278–280).