In this long interview, I ask Dr.Weiss about the metaphysics of Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo in the light of some contemporary philosophical thinking, and how such a metaphysics provides a framework for understanding the findings of science and the afterlife phenomena. I thank Dr.Weiss for accepting the interview. Enjoy.
1)Dr.Weiss, tell us a little bit about your background.
My interest in consciousness and spirituality go back as far as I can remember. I also, somewhere in my childhood, became very interested in science. This early and clear formulation of my interests itself leads me to suspect that my interest may be inherited from earlier lives.
My first spiritual teacher was Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist guru. I studied with him for seven years, did a great deal of intensive meditation, and began my development as a teacher. While I learned a great deal from Trungpa, I eventually left his organization because of my intense discomfort regarding its cult-like qualities.
After that, I began an intensive study of Western traditions, including my own native Judaic tradition and the broader currents of Western philosophy.
I eventually discovered the work of Sri Aurobindo, which elegantly synthesized all of the learning that I had done to that point. Sri Aurobindo provided me with a new spiritual orientation, but his thinking did not have the materials that I needed to come to terms with science. I began to really understand science, what it is and how it works, when I began to study the work of Alfred North Whitehead. I then realized that Sri Aurobindo’s ideas and Alfred North Whitehead’s ideas were entirely complementary, and I have synthesized them in my own ideas, which I am calling Transphysical Process Metaphysics, and which I have expressed in my book, The Long Trajectory.
2)Why did you get interested in Sri Aurobindo and Alfred North Whitehead and in topics like survival of consciousness?
I discussed this somewhat in my answer to the first question. Still, it is not easy to answer the question as to “why” I got interested in these subjects. As far as I know, I just found myself already interested in these topics as I began to think as a small child. I became interested in Sri Aurobindo and Alfred North Whitehead (among others) because they answered the questions that I already found myself wrestling with.
3)Alfred North Whitehead is very well known in the contemporary intellectual scene, but Sri Aurobindo only seems to be known in certain, more limited circles. Could you describe briefly who was Sri Aurobindo and why his work is important to contemporary readers?
Sri Aurobindo occupies an interesting place in the history of thought. He was born in (1872) in India. While he was Indian, his father was an intense anglophile who did his best to shield young Aurobindo from native Indian influences, and to expose him only to English ideas. He was sent to England at an early age and eventually graduated with high honors from Cambridge. Thus he had an excellent English education. He became very interested in Indian independence, and went back to India where he formed a deep connection with Indian traditions and languages, and was a very prominent leader of the Indian Independence Movement. Later he became interested in yoga, and had a series of transformative spiritual experiences. He developed these experiences into a metaphysical cosmology and an elegant reformulation of the principles of yoga on an evolutionary basis. His thinking is a remarkable synthesis of Eastern and Western ideas, and it deserves much more attention that it currently receives.
Unfortunately, Sri Aurobindo’s style of writing is difficult for modern readers. He writes in long, complex, elegant sentences that strain the attention span, and he also writes in an “ex-cathedra” style, disdaining footnotes and the other paraphernalia of modern scholarship.
His descriptions of transphysical worlds, particularly in Part I Book II of his epic poem Savitri, is unparalleled in the English language.
4)In your book, you have argued that the metaphysics of Aurobindo and Whitehead provides a helpful framework to understand contemporary science and, more importantly, the evidence for survival. Can you briefly explain to us the basic aspects of these metaphysical ideas?
Alfred North Whitehead was a mathematician and a scientist as well as a philosopher. His mature philosophy can be regarded as a philosophical generalization of quantum theory. Quantum theory replaces a world of atoms with the idea of “events.” Each quantum event is a happening which takes place once, and then lives on as a causally effective element of the past. Everyday things can be decomposed into atoms, but atoms can only be decomposed into brief energetic events. Thus quantum theory ultimately abandons both the idea of solid matter and the idea of substance itself. Whitehead makes the observation that our experience, itself, can also be decomposed into events. Each moment of our experience can be decomposed into many sensation events, some perceptual events, some evaluative events, some cognitive events and so on. Whitehead’s idea is that the events of our experience – which are finite in time and leave behind causally effective memories -- are of the same ontological type as the events around us in the world. Thus each event, like those in our experience, is characterized by awareness, valuation and choice. In other words, Whitehead proposed that consciousness is quantized, and that it goes “all the way down,” so that even quantum events involve some, however minor, subjectivity. The fact that Whitehead’s ideas grow out of Quantum Mechanics is reflected in the fact that increasing numbers of quantum theorists are taking Whitehead as their philosophical inspiration.
Once we build consciousness into the very definition of actuality, the mind/body problem, among others, becomes entirely clarified. Indeed, I would say that Whitehead decisively solved the entire mind/body problem back in the 1930’s.
While Whitehead himself discussed parapsychology only marginally, his description of the universe enables us to generate a satisfactory philosophy of normal science, and parapsychological, occult and mystical ideas also find an entire justification.
Whitehead, however, cannot, by himself, take us all the way to the understanding that we need. Whitehead’s theological ideas are, in my opinion, inadequate in that they do not make room for the mystical and yogic experiences about which we learn both from Western mystics and by the teachings of the East.
Sri Aurobindo solves that difficulty by creating a metaphysical cosmology rooted in a Divine Absolute. He expands modern cosmology by incorporating the transphysical worlds (the worlds that we visit in dreams, out-of-body experiences, etc.). He also elaborates an evolutionary narrative in which evolution is preceded by “involution,” the process through which the Divine Absolute manifests the initial conditions of the evolutionary process.
Since Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary narrative accounts beautifully for the emergence of individual “conscious events” in the evolutionary process, the two philosophies converge in an overall narrative that does justice to everyday life, to science, to occultism and to mysticism. It is this larger narrative that I am discussing in my book, The Long Trajectory.
5)Whitehead's process metaphysics has been criticized for its reification of processes and events as whether they were metaphysically basic entities, But most contemporary metaphysicians argue that events and processes are properties of substances. For example, considered as a single entity, the Earth is a substance and its rotation in a given time is an event. Such event doesn't exist by itself, but that it is something which happens to a substance (Earth) and hence is dependent for its existence on the Earth's existence (i.e. without any Earth, there is not a rotation of the Earth). What do you think of this objection.
Whitehead argues that the idea of “substance” is intellectual baggage that we need to discard if we are to make sense of our actual situation. Substance (with Aristotle) originally was the mysterious something that held together the various properties of a thing. So, for example, my cup is hard, shiny, yellow, cylindrical and so forth. But there must be something in which all of those characters inhere so that they can move together as a bundle through time and space. For Aristotle, “substance” was entirely formless and had only the property of being able to individualize. Note that Aristotle’s substances were never elements in experience, just an idea of something that “had to be there.” The modern idea of substance is quite different from Aristotle’s original idea. Descartes defined substance as “that which needs nothing other than itself to exist.” The Newton’s “atoms” are Cartesian substances. Unlike Aristotle’s formless substance, these substances are always already formed – they have certain attributes such as shape and size that are built into their very existence and they do not change in time. Also, these substances would be just as they are even if the rest of the universe were to disappear. Again, like Aristotle’s substance, modern substances are unobservable. While everything in experience is in a process of change, these primary substances presumably are not. As Whitehead exhaustively demonstrates, the very notion of substance, particularly in its modern form, is untenable. The “substance” of a thing turns out to be merely an abstraction. Let us return to my yellow cup. In any given moment, that cup is a complex process involving countless atoms and sub-atomic events. Each of those entities making up the cup is influenced, however slightly, by every other event making up the entirety of the past universe. The cup is, in any given moment, a unique event. Now, it happens to be the case that all of these cup events share a common character – the character of “cupness.” I can abstract the idea of “cupness” from the sequence of events, and it is a valid description of that sequence, but it is not an ultimate description of the actual world. There is no cup “out there.” Rather what is out there is composed of events that share in the character of cupness.
If we think of substances as something that actually exist we run into endless conceptual difficulties. I cannot know “substance” because it only reveals itself by its characters. So substances, if they are actual, are unknowable. Also, since substances need nothing other than themselves to exist, it is very difficult to understand causal relations among them. Thinking can be vastly clarified if we give up the notion that “substances” are the real things and realize, instead, that “substance” is a high-level abstraction, useful for everyday life, but not descriptive of ultimate reality.
You suggest that the rotation of the Earth can only be made intelligible if the Earth is thought of as a substance that can rotate. But is the Earth a substance? Would it exist even if the rest of the universe were to perish? Can we find anything in or on the Earth that is not, itself, an event? Is not the Earth itself, like my cup, a highly complex recurring event? The Earth’s turning is a useful way of describing certain fixed patterns of relationship among the events constituting the Earth.
Part of the difficulty here is the assumption that if there is a movement, there must be something that is moving. But this is just an old mental habit. An event is not a snapshot but rather a segment of a movie. Events are temporally delimited processes, and there is change built into the very nature of an event as well.
It is not easy to move beyond substance thinking, and I cannot justify that move in just a few paragraphs. Indeed, making this rejection of substance comprehensible is one of the major tasks of Whitehead’s entire philosophical opus, and is one of the central concerns in The Long Trajectory.
6)Whitehead's so-called "eternal objects" are better understood as "forms of definiteness", which are contained in Being (=the all encompassing reality which comprise all specific possibilities of manifestation). Examples of these eternal forms would be such things as "redness", "roundness", "hardness", "compactness" "bigness", "rage" "ecstasy", etc. Some philosophers reject that view arguing that such forms are properties of concrete objects (e.g. "redness" doesn't exist by itself, let alone eternally; it only exists as a property of macrophysical objects like apples. Likewise, "ecstasy or rage" are emotional properties of some sentient beings like advanced mammals, not eternal nor self-existing abstract objects). What do you think of this objection?
Eternal objects do not exist by themselves in some special realm. They are nothing other than possibilities of definiteness. Eternal objects function as a characteristics of events. Thus we do not see “redness” by itself, but only red objects. This is true as long as we consider only the past. But when we turn our attention to the future, we find ourselves dealing with possible events that may possibly be red. “I think I will make some red decorations for my wall.” Here redness is not yet the character of any real thing. Heisenberg’s interpretation of Quantum Theory calls for the existence of “objective probabilities.” That is, the real universe consists both of actualities and of possibilities. I don’t think we can make sense of the fullness of temporal experience without giving eternal objects status as something other than the characters of past events.
7)Another objection posed by philosophers come from quantum physics: Properties like "redness" or "hardness" or "compactness" are purely phenomenological, sensory and macroscopic properties which don't exist objectively in the objects themselves. They're illusions of our senses. So, quantum physicist Marco Biagini argues: "Also the concept of a macroscopic rigid and compact object is only an optical illusion, and not a physical entity. The image of the object we see is in fact only an approximate representation of the real physical object. No object exist in nature as we see it; solid objects appear to us as if they were uniformly filled with motionless matter, while they are only sets of rapidly moving particles; matter is concentrated in a very small fraction of the space occupied by the solid object, mostly in the atomic nuclea, and it has no uniform distribution as it appears to us. The laws of physics establish that the possible properties of every particle or molecule are the same, that is the property of exchange energy with other particles or photons, and the property of movement; these are the properties of every quantum particle, and no aggregate of quantum particles can have new properties. Therefore, no real macroscopic properties exist." What do you think of this objection?
Science is supposed to be “empirical,” which ought to mean that it is grounded in experience. All scientific explanations are ultimate aimed at predicting and controlling certain experiences. For example, I experience a flash of redness and attribute it interactions of cells with electromagnetic energies and so forth. But what is the actual relationship between the experience (a flash of redness) and the supposed entities involved in its production (cells, energies, etc.)?
There is a procedure (the so-called scientific method) which allows us to describe our experience in terms of the explanatory ideas of science. As far as we can tell, scientific ideas are ways of describing certain recurring patterns among the events that we experience. In this capacity, they work well. But there is a habit of modern thought which creates endless confusion – that is the habit of assuming that our scientific reasoning gives us a window into an outer, objective world that is “really there” before experience so that our experience is just a confused glimpse of that. We take ideas that are useful for the explanation of certain patterns of events in experience, and then we assume that those ideas describe a world that transcends the experiences from which it was derived. Whitehead calls this “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” It is the mistake of confusing mere abstractions for the real thing.
This can be clearly illustrated in the case of Newtonian science. A study of experience yields ideas such as “thing,” “mass” and “gravity”. Experimentation is a procedure that allows numbers to be assigned to these ideas. Weighing, for example, is an experimental procedure that assigns a number to a mass. Mathematical tools are developed to deal with relations among these measurements. Calculus, in this example, allows some calculation of the effects of gravity on things over space and time. The central idea of calculus is that of the “point-instant.” Newtonian cosmology reifies the point-instant and turns it into “atoms.” Atoms are just reifications of the point-instants of calculus. As such, they function well in certain calculations of macroscopic interactions among things. This is all good. But if we then assume that atoms, rather than functioning as descriptive conveniences, are the only things that actually exist, we get into major trouble. Here we are taking a scheme of ideas which is very useful in the analysis of macroscopic motion and projecting it out beyond experience as the “real thing” from which experience is derived. It should not surprise us that this explanatory scheme – designed for the analysis of motion – should prove inadequate to a consideration of consciousness, life, love, value and the Divine.
What is real and important is experience. Ideas are descriptions of experience, and useful only in that function. There is no reality in any way relevant to us that is beyond experience.
8)Sri Aurobindo grounds his thinking in an absolute that exists, is conscious, is creative and is involved in the appreciation of value. he calls this ground “Sachchidananda". This presses the following question: Is the ultimate ground of being (Sachchidananda) a person (defined ontologically and roughly as an individual being endowned with a rational mind, self-awareness, intentionality, intelligence, free will, creativity, etc.) or is it rather some sort of ultimate impersonal kind of stuff/energy?
Is the ground of being impersonal or personal? It is an error to see the personal and the impersonal as contradictories. They seem, rather, to be complementary. They are different modes of expression both of which are necessary to the consideration of the ultimate ground.
The intellect has a hard time with the notion of “person.” In fact, the very idea of person is somewhat antithetical to both philosophy and science, both of which are attempts to describe the world in terms of impersonal ideas. But our lives make no sense without the idea of persons. The mind, as Sri Aurobindo suggests, must learn about persons from the heart. But without using the idea of person the mind cannot generate a satisfactory description of experience.
I acknowledge the necessity for some element of the ground of being to be impersonal and unchanging. It seems to me that without something utterly unchanging, there could be no order in the constant flux of being. But I see this impersonality as an abstraction from the fullness of the ground, which must be at least personal if persons are to arise in the course of evolution.
This question is also tied to the distinction between the “apophatic” traditions and the “catophatic” traditions. The apophatic traditions, like Buddhism, approach the ground by pointing out what it IS NOT, whereas the catophatic traditions try to give some positive description of what the ground IS. Apophatic traditions, therefore, reject all positive description of the ground including a description of it as personal. Catophatic traditions (such Hinduism and Christianity) describe the ground as personal in an attempt at fullness of description. Both approaches are necessary.
9)Inspired by Sri Aurobindo, you have suggested that consciousness is a part of Sachchidananda. Consciousness could be defined as the faculty of selective attention. So, it is the dynamic aspect of God. Can you expand on this concept?
The Divine Ground, or Sachchidananda, can be understood as a unity which can be approached through the ideas of Being, Consciousness/Force, and Value. Being refers to the fact that something is, indeed, happening. It is also a category that includes possibility and actuality, and also all of the specific ways in which being can manifest – the specific forms of definiteness or “eternal objects.” Consciousness is the intrinsic self illumination of being. It is also the capacity to attend selectively to certain possible forms of being. Since there is nothing that can obstruct the action of Sachchidananda, what it attends to it realizes. Thus if the Consciousness of Sachchidananda attends to the possibility of certain universe, that universe arises. This capacity of conscious decision to bring about manifestation is the Force of Consciousness. Value is the reason why. Consciousness attends to certain forms of definiteness, which are then manifested for the sake of the value that is thus realized. Sachchidananda can be seen that this basic gesture of being – the attention to specific possibilities with the aim at realizing them for the sake of the value thus realized – is common to all actual events. These ideas are explicated in some depth in my book.
10)In the metaphysical context of Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo, in your opinion, what is the best philosophical or scientific argument or evidence for the existence of God?
We have to be very careful when we ask for arguments or evidence for the existence of God.
Let us speak first of the question of evidence. If, by evidence, we are referring to scientific evidence, then there can be no evidence for the existence of God. Scientific evidence always refers to specific facts, and God is not a specific fact in the scientific sense. If there is a God, then that entity is responsible for the very possibility of experimenting at all, and cannot be captured by any experiment or series of experiments.
There are many ideas that are taken as scientific truths even though there can be no evidence for or against them. Take, for example, the idea that matter is dead and automatic. This idea is consistent with many scientific findings, but it cannot be established scientifically. All of the relevant scientific evidence is accounted for just as well by a process approach such as that which I am advocating in my book. The same evidence can be interpreted in two different ways, and no particular experiment can distinguish which is better. We should not let the fact that experimental evidence can establish certain facts lead us to expect that we can find scientific evidence for all facts.
I accept from tradition and from my own experience that certain mystical experiences can be taken as evidence for the existence of God. I also take it that our willingness to think in terms of God reflects certain pre-philosophical value commitments. It seems to me that if reality is not in some sense One, then philosophical thought – which seeks to demonstrate the wholeness of things - is irrelevant. Also, if the Ground cannot be experienced directly by human beings, then life is ultimately an insoluble mystery, and I am temperamentally adverse to that idea.
Intellect can justify any position we want to take. And the arguments against God’s existence are compelling to those who would prefer to live in a Godless universe. I assume the existence of a Divine Ground, but I do not claim that such an assumption can be verified by argument or evidence.
11)Atheists sympathetic to Eastern spiritual doctrines, spiritualism and mysticism could suggest that there is not an ultimate or senior Sachchidananda, Braham or personal God at all. Only "consciousness" exists and such consciousness is purely impersonal. The ultimate reality is either a kind of "all-pervading energy" or at best such ultimate reality is simply composed of multiple, maybe unlimited, number of self-existing and eternal spiritual beings (=ourselves), without any unique or absolute God or Sachchidananda or Brahman having any metaphysical priority at all. What do you think of this view?
Whenever well intentioned human beings articulate a variety of positions regarding some issue, I assume that each of those positions expresses some aspect of the truth. There are experiences which justify the notion of God as pure consciousness and impersonal energy, experiences which justify the idea multiple spiritual beings, and experiences which justify the existence of a single ultimate personal being. I do not try to decide which of these positions is true, but rather I try to understand a universe in which all of these experiences are possible and revelatory. In this work, Sri Aurobindo is my chief guide. His work is a masterful synthesis of all of these views.
12)What do you think of the so-called problem of evil (or suffering) as an argument against God's existence? Do the Whithead/Auribondo metaphysics provide some satisfactory answer to the problem of evil/suffering?
Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead approach the problem of evil (the “question of theodicy”) in very different ways.
The Whiteheadian approach, favored by philosophers such as Whitehead, Cobb and Hartshorne, excuses God from Evil by sacrificing both God’s omnipotence and God’s Omniscience. God is there envisioned not as a creator, but rather as a special entity in creation. God initiates events, and provides them with values, but does not control the decisions that they make. The freedom of events allows for the arising of evil situations.
Sri Aurobindo, on the other hand, retains the notion of God as an omnipotent, omniscient creator, but solves the problem of evil ultimately by saying that good and evil are distinctions relevant to the human stage of evolution, but not relevant to the Divine Him/Her/Itself. God, who manifests all of evolution, accepts and enjoys all values (positive and negative) as part of His/Her/It’s Bliss. God is thus not a being of Good and Evil, but a being of the enjoyment of value.
I find Sri Aurobindo’s explanation for evil more spiritually fulfilling than Whitehead’s.
13)Let's discuss more specifically the relevance of Whitehead/Aurobindo metaphysics to parapsychology. In such metaphysics, what is the relation between the brain and consciousness?
These are clearly complex issues, and I can only hint at their full explication here.
There are two issues that often get conflated when we discuss the relation between the brain and consciousness. The first is the mind/matter problem, and second is the mind/brain problem. Let me discuss them one at a time.
The mind/matter problem is acute if we adopt a materialist position. The explanatory ideas of materialism are too poor and abstract to do justice to the mere existence of consciousness, let alone to the significance of its functions in the world. Process metaphysics replaces the idea of matter (atoms, sub-atomic events, energy) and replaces it with the idea of causally effective moments of experience. Thus every cell in the brain, every atom in every cell, and every sub-atomic event in every atom is an occasion of experience. It is aware, valuing decisive and causally effective in the world.
Let us consider a sub-atomic event. According to physicists, the event, as it arises, feels the causal impacts of the past. It then elaborates a matrix of possibilities and, somehow, a choice is made among those possibilities which determines what we will be for future events. Quantum Mechanics itself cannot account for this choice. In Transphysical Process Metaphysics, we proceed on the assumption that the emerging event itself decides which probabilities it will actualize. If we make this assumption – an assumption that is compatible with the available evidence, then we can see a clear analogy between a quantum event and a human event. Each event feels the causal influences of the past, articulates a matrix of possibilities, values those possibilities differentially, then decides which of those possibilities it will make actual. Consciousness is not epiphenomenal, nor is it merely a passive witness. It is consciousness that decides which possibility among those available to it that it will actualize. Consciousness was the agency of actualization in every event making up the universe of events out of which we arise, and it is the agency of actualization for those who will be affected by our choices in the future. I offer this idea, as elaborated in Whitehead’s work and in my own, as a solution to the mind/matter problem.
Now we consider the mind/brain problem. If we consider the brain in the context of materialism, then this issue simply cannot be solved. It requires a miracle to make the shift from mathematically mediated causes among dead things and processes to life, mind and consciousness. If we recognize the ontological ultimacy of moments of experience, however, we can make a distinction between moments of various “grades.” Low grade moments, like those characterizing inorganic events, apprehend the world in a very abstract way (they behave as if the past is nothing but, for example, a gravitational gradient), they consider few choices concerning the future, and they are dominated by an aim at unchanging recurrence in time. Medium grade occasions, like those dominating living things, apprehend the world in a much richer, fuller, more concrete way, responding to a wide variety of qualities and forms. They elaborate a richer range of choices than do low grade occasions, and they are dominated by an urge at novelty and change. High grade occasions, such as those dominating thinking beings, respond to the world in a richer and more complex way that do medium grade occasions, elaborate complex decision trees and make deliberate choices among them with the potential, at least, for an aim at a balanced development of human potentialities.
Transphysical Process Metaphysics recurs to the old idea – common to all civilizations prior to the articulation of materialism – that the physical world is not the whole of the actual world. The physical world is a system of low grade moments of experience. Waking experience is dominated by this physical world. But there is also a world of medium grade occasions, sometimes called the vital or astral world. This is the world experienced in e.g., dreams, lucid dreams, and out of body experiences), and we have a body in that world – our “astral body.” We also have other bodies, including a “mental body” and others which are variously named in different traditions. Transphysical Process Metaphysics works out the compatibility of this expanded cosmos with the physical universe as understood by physics. It also explains the emergence of life and self-organization as the “embodiment” of astral moments into systems of physical components.
Transphysical Process Metaphysics deals with the mind/brain problem by recognizing that the brain is, itself, a complex living system and, as such, is already permeated by the embodiment of astral entities. Configured as nervous tissue, astral occasions permit the expression of the mental body in waking life. In effect, the brain becomes an organic receiver/transmitter for mental functions which are not outside of the real world, but are outside of the physical world.
14)Materialists argue that neuroscience has proven a very close correlations between brain states and mental states, justifying the scientific conclusion that consciousness depend ontologically on the brain. How would the Whitehead/Aurobindo metaphysics address that objection?
I do not attempt to deny the correlations between brain states and mental states. I would expect this to be the case. However the fact that there is a correlation in no way proves a causal dependency. If you unthinkingly assume that matter exists while mental states are questionable, then the establishment of a correlation will imply a causal dependency. But this is precisely the assumption that we need to give up if we’re going to make sense of ourselves. Transphysical Process Metaphysics suggests that mind is a transphysical organ that expresses itself in waking life through the brain. Thus it envisions transphysical mind as a significant determinant of brain states.
15)How exactly the Whitehead/Aurobindo metaphysics explain all the evidence of neuroscience, parapsychology and survival, which (at least for materialists) seem to be in tension?
The point is that materialism is the problem here. I’m not saying that materialism is wrong, only that it is limited. Trying to explain experience in terms of materialism is like trying to explain the experience of vision without reference to color. It is not the job of evidence to justify science, it is the job of science to understand evidence. The evidence for parapsychology, transphysical worlds, survival and reincarnation is here. Science has to grow into it. In order to grow into this new evidence, science must transcend materialism. Of course, even to understand quantum mechanics requires us to transcend materialism. I offer my work as a framework within which quantum theory can be interpreted, and as a way of bringing systematic understanding to the parapsychological domains.
16)You have argued that reincarnation is part of the human life-cycle. If it is correct, does it mean that (according to your view) every human being has had a past-life and eventually will experience reincarnation in some moment of his life-cycle?
The simple answer to this question is yes. I accept a Soul theory in which each of my lifetimes is the expression of a single evolving entity which reincarnates many times. In my book, I exhibit this hypothesis as one among other equally plausible hypothesis regarding the course of reincarnation.
17)If we accept the evidence for reincarnation, at most it seems to suggest that some (perhaps a minority of) people has reincarnated. But then how could reincarnation be part of the human life-cycle, when most people (apparently) don't reincarnate?
In reincarnation, it is not the personality that reincarnates, but something else. That something else may be a karmic bundle, or it may be an evolving Soul. Either story works for its own purposes. But individual personalities like ours are intrinsic to the time and place in which they function. The karmic bundle, or the Soul, must transcend individual personalities. Either there is no Soul, or the Soul is in need of constantly novel experiences. Thus “Eric” will not be reincarnated. But there will be a future personality which will be intimately affected by the quality of my experience in this life.
18)Regardless of the evidence, is it metaphysically possible (in the light of Whitehead/Aurobindo metaphysics) that a human being could reincarnate in a less evolved biological organism, let's say in an animal like a dog or a monkey, or even in another planet?
This is two questions, which I’d like to separate. Let me first address reincarnation in less evolved forms. Remember, first, that personalities do not reincarnate. It is either karmic bundles or Souls that reincarnate. If we assume the straightforward linearity of time (which may be questionable when dealing with Souls), there seems to be no metaphysical reason why a Soul, having realized a human incarnation, might not go back to some other form for the cultivation of some particular quality. Whether or not this actually happens, seems to be an empirical question about which I lack data.
19)Is it possible to release oneself from the cycle of sucessive reincarnations, like some religions propose?
Assuming that our existence is a cycle of reincarnations, do we need release from it? We do, if we are in a steady-state universe in which there are two conditions – the condition of being lost in endless rounds of suffering (samsara), and the condition of being utterly calm in content-less bliss (nirvana). But if we live in an evolving universe a new choice opens up for us. We are not lost in an endless cycle of suffering, but rather participating in a process that is going somewhere. If evolution holds a glorious destiny for the human Soul, then staying here, in the world, becomes worthwhile and interesting. In an understanding of evolution which acknowledges both an evolution of organisms and an evolution of Souls, we have neither the need nor the power to stop the evolutionary unfolding.
There is, however, the possibility of a radical liberation from the ego process. The ego process involves an identification of ourselves with our finite bodies in our finite circumstances. It is possible to realize the excessive narrowness of that definition, and to discover ones actual self as a universal and transcendent being. To be caught in reincarnation is one thing, and to experience reincarnation as a self-conscious gesture of the Divine would be radically different experiences.
The data of yoga point to this transformation as something that Soul can achieve in human bodies. In my book, I show how both the insights of physics and the highest mystical insights are all possibilities built into the nature of moments of experience.
20)Materialists have argued that reincarnation is not a scientific hypothesis, because it is not falsifiable. What do you think of this objection?
I would agree that reincarnation cannot be scientifically falsified. As I pointed out earlier, neither can materialism. Scientific paradigms are not designed for considering any issues involving consciousness, personality, and value, so this should not surprise us.
The courts of science have their valid jurisdictions, but they do not extent to the subjective dimension of existence. We must rethink not science itself, but the metaphysical foundations of science, so that science can apply itself to a more comprehensive domain.
21)What is the connection between Whitehead/Aurobindo metaphysics, reincarnation and the theory of biological evolution? Do you think evolution occur like Darwinists suggest, namely by natural selection operating on random mutations?
The idea of evolution proceeding by natural selection operating on random mutations is a materialist fantasy. It is part of an intellectual program that attempts to account for all that we experience in terms of necessity and chance. But, as I have pointed out already in this interview, the explanatory concepts of materialism are simply inadequate to the description of the full richness of experience. We, ourselves, are evolving beings, and it is clear from our experience that our evolution depends on our beliefs, our thoughts, our feelings and our values. In Transphysical Process Metaphysics, we assume that theses same subjective factors (greatly simplified and limited in the case of lower grade moments) operate in all individual events, and so are determinative of evolution at every stage.
The idea of evolution proceeding by natural selection operating on random mutations is a materialist fantasy. It is part of an intellectual program that attempts to account for all that we experience in terms of necessity and chance. But, as I have pointed out already in this interview, the explanatory concepts of materialism are simply inadequate to the description of the full richness of experience. We, ourselves, are evolving beings, and it is clear from our experience that our evolution depends on our beliefs, our thoughts, our feelings and our values. In Transphysical Process Metaphysics, we assume that theses same subjective factors (greatly simplified and limited in the case of lower grade moments) operate in all individual events, and so are determinative of evolution at every stage.
22)What books on science, parapsychology and philosophy would you like to recommend to the readers of this interview?
There is one book I’d particularly like to mention. It’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, by A. E. Burtt. This book traces the historical development of materialist ideas starting with Copernicus and Kepler and culminating with Newton. Those of us educated in a scientific culture become deeply hypnotized by scientific ideas. Tracing the history of scientific thought is perhaps the best way to awaken from the trance, and this book traces that history in an elegant and readable way.
I would also like to bring attention to my website, ericweiss.com.
23)Do you want to add something else to end the interview?
Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory have already exploded the world of materialism. Materialism worked well in the 17th Century, but now is hopelessly out of date. Not only has physics transcended materialism, but the overwhelming evidence for parapsychological phenomena – both experimental evidence and the evidence of the yogic traditions, and the evidence everyday life – is overwhelming. Science is searching for a new paradigm.
We must, in the technological world that we inhabit, acknowledge the validity of science. But this does not obligate us to a materialist approach. We can respect the results of science without giving scientists credit for knowing the ultimate truths of existence.
In my book, I have tried to do full justice to the results of scientific research, while placing that work on a broader foundation of ideas more adequate to the fullness of human experience.
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