The hard problem revisited

from cognitive neuroscience to kabbalah and back again

pp. 229-251

in: Harald Walach, Stefan Schmidt, Wayne B. Jonas (eds), Neuroscience, consciousness and spirituality, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

The dialogue between cognitive neuroscience and spirituality/mysticism has largely entailed measuring the neural and cognitive effects of spiritual practices. Such research follows from the spiritual traditions' teachings about the intended psychological effects of practice. The ontologically more challenging postulates of spiritual traditions (e.g., mind beyond brain, "higher" or "ultimate" realities) are ignored when focusing in this way on measurable concomitants of practice. In this chapter I argue that the dialogue should be widened to include some of the ontologically more challenging concepts, where these involve references to the brain and psychological states. A specific example is examined in some detail: the kabbalistic worldview posits a correspondence between higher and lower levels in the cosmos ("macrocosm" and "microcosm"), and includes notions of unconscious thought arising in "brains' in the Godhead. I demonstrate that the macrocosmic principles advanced in kabbalistic literature display a degree of concordance with the results of current research into the neural correlate of consciousness. I explore the implications of this concordance for the light it may cast on the enduring hard problem of consciousness.