Awakening from the Meaning Crisis Part 8–13

Meditation, Consciousness, Non-Duality, & Altered States

28 min readMar 10, 2023

Welcome back to Awakening from the Meaning Crisis notes. If you missed Part 4–7 click here. Notes on Dr. John Vervaeke’s Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. Link to full series here.

Part 8: The Buddha & Mindfulness

Moving from the axial age in Greece and ancient Israel to India, exploring Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) and mindfulness.

Siddhartha Gautama:

Siddhartha Gautama embodies the axial revolution of ancient India, much like how Socrates embodies it in ancient Greece.

Prophesized at birth to become a great king or an important religious figure
His father chose kingship for him and shielded him from religious life, providing him all the benefits of power and prosperity
Siddhartha was kept in the palace, protected from any distressing sights, surrounded by beautiful women and plenty of food
To understand the significance of the palace and the rest of Siddhartha’s journey we need to introduce work by Fromm

Fromm and the Palace (Being vs Having):

Fromm suggests that there are two existential modes: To Have, and To Be. The reduction of unease is of each of these modes is done by satisfying either ‘Having needs’ or ‘Being needs’.

Having needs:

I-It relationship (having mode)
Categorical
About control and manipulation
Intelligence — problem solving
Satisfied by both categorizing things & controlling them effectively. (e.g. being able to categorize/manipulate/control, say, a cup, allows you to drink water more efficiently, and you need water.)

Being needs:

I-thou relationship (being mode)
Expressively
Reciprocal realization
Reason — meaning making
The being needs are met not by having something but by becoming something. (e.g. you need to become mature, or virtuous, etc.) These are developmental needs
You relate to things not categorically, but expressively. (Being in love, for example, is a process of reciprocal realization)

Modal Confusion:

Modal confusion (modal fallacy) in this case is pursuing being needs from the having mode. E.g. materialistic things as a sign of status / self-worth — using these ‘its’ to try ‘become’ someone

To live in the palace is to try and live everything from the having mode. A myth that is prevalent in today’s society and a reason for the meaning crisis.

‘Buddhist Monastery’ — Dominik Zdenković (2019)

Siddhartha’s Attempt to Leave the Palace:

When Siddhartha left the perfect palace for the first time, he saw three sights that increasingly disturbed him: a sick man, an old man, and a dead body. And when he learned this would happen to him also he was existentially distressed

His entire ‘having’ mode had been completely undermined. No number of things, and I-it relationships would stop these events happening.

‘Prince Siddartha Encounters the Four Sights’

He experienced Disillusionment (dual meaning). Now refers to a negative state (sadness, despair) but means loss of illusion. His worldview (agent-arena relationship) had been disillusioned
When Siddhartha began to return to the palace disillusioned, he met a mendicant (a renouncer of the having-mode) — completely at peace. This was his introduction to the Being mode
When he returned to the palace to rejoin that world, he met a mendicant — a renouncer of the ‘having’ mode essentially — who appeared completely at peace. And this contrast between Siddhartha’s distress and the peace in this man was his introduction to the ‘being’ mode
And thus, Siddhartha began his seeking of peace

Seeking Peace & the Middle Path:

Because Siddhartha felt he had over-indulged in the having-mode, he pursued a life of asceticism — of self-denial (the opposite of self-indulgence)
While he starved and negated the self, it did not work because trying to annihilate the self is still thinking about having a self
He is still modally confused; still in the ‘having’ mode and trying to understand the ‘problem’ from that mode. It’s merely the negation of self-indulgence, not a reframing and transcendence
So, he shifted to ‘the middle path’

Middle Path & Mindfulness:

The Middle Path is to transcend the having mode by rejecting self-indulgence and its negation self-denial.

To remember the being mode by being connected to the world. The Sanskrit word for mindfulness is ‘sati’ — which means a deep, embodied sense of remembrance
When you wake up from sleeping you recover your identity. You ‘re-member’ — you become a member again, you belong back to yourself

Mindfulness is a psychotechnology which helps to remember/recover the being mode and brings about awakening through disillusionment.

As such, the mindfulness revolution is a response to the meaning crisis today. A way to awaken from the meaning crisis
If we resituate this idea in his myth, we can see how the Buddha cultivated mindfulness to cultivate awakening as a response to the meaning crisis
So next, lets deep-dive into mindfulness and the constative psychotechnoloies that will help us afford it

Understanding the Cognitive Science of Mindfulness:

This next section is based on work by Vervaeke: ‘Reformulating the mindfulness construct’

The most common descriptions of mindfulness do not help us understand mindfulness and how it works:

Being present
Non-judging
Insight
Reduced reactivity.

This is a feature list. We’re missing the eidos (structural-functional organisation that says how these things go together — as mentioned in Part 5).

Schema of These Features:

We need to split these four features into states and traits:

Being present and non-judging are things I can do. I can start and stop them (States)
While insight and reduced reactivity are not things you’re doing, they’re results (Traits)

Once you organize them this way you can begin asking how the states can cause the traits. We will slowly develop these schemata over the next sections to understand what is happening with mindfulness and awakening

In Part 9, we’ll explore the schematic of attention and mindfulness, and touch on how this motivates and empowers people to escape from model confusion and other existential dilemmas

Part 9: Insight

Let’s continue our exploration of the schematic of mindfulness by starting with being present, and how it relates to insight.

Being Present:

Being present is not about attention or concentration. It is about the right type of attention.

Ellen Langer talks about ‘soft vigilance’: constantly trying to renew your interest in something. (The etymology of the word ‘interest’ is rooted in the idea of ‘to be in something’)
Attention is about a complex optimization process of attuning to reality and allowing to participate / form to the object of attention
So, what is attention?

‘Streams of Consciousness’ — Pablo Saborio (2014)

Structure of Attention:

Michael Polanyi pointed out that attention has a specific structure: an in-and-out “transparency-to-opacity shift”.

Focal vs Explicit Attention:

Attention is moving forward and back between transparency and opacity:

Focal/Subsidiary Awareness: Awareness through something (e.g., tip of a pencil)
Explicit Awareness: Awareness at something
Since you can shift between these, attention is a structuring phenomenon

Examples:

One can integrate literacy into ones thinking so much that one doesn’t look at it but looks through it. Or attention on the tip of your finger vs the pen that is being held

Features and Gestalt (eidos):

Attention is also flowing up and down between ‘features’ and gestalt (larger view)

Example:

Interpreting the letters that make up a word (features) + the word and its meaning (gestalt)

With this structure you end up with a set of axes: the left-right of transparency-opacity, and the up-down of gestalt-features.

Schema of Attention:

From this we can generate a schema to represent this shifting from Transparent to Opaque and Gestalt to Features.

It looks like a Cartesian plane, but it is not a graph. There is no absolute position as all positions are relative.

Scaling Up and Scaling Down:

While these G+F and O+T can occur separately, they almost always act in a highly dynamic fashion together, by ‘scaling-up’, and ‘scaling-down’.

One looks at the gestalt (at the bigger picture) to pick up on patterns to look more deeply at the world (transparent). So often our attention is within the green box
Often when stepping back, and looking at our mind processes within attention (opaque), we are breaking down the gestalt into features (blue box). For example, thinking of the fingertips rather than just fingers

Green = scaling up of attention; Blue = scaling down of attention

Meditation & Contemplation:

Mindfulness has to do with using awareness to optimize these complex dynamic processes. And part of mindfulness is practices such as meditation and contemplation which scale up and down this schema.

Mediation:

Meditation means moving towards center
Paying attention to the sensations of the stomach while they breath, while maintain the interest
Normally we do not pay attention TO our sensations, we pay attention THROUGH our sensations (more opaque). Also looking at the fine details of awareness, not just one blob of sensation (more features)
Example: Vipassana

Meditation is a scaling down strategy

Contemplation:

Contemplation is often (today) used as a synonym for meditation
But contemplation is about deeply looking into the world to explore one’s place in the whole — oneness
Example: Mettā

Contemplation is scaling up strategy

Mindfulness & Insight:

Bringing it together, now we know how attention (being present — the state) relates to mindfulness itself, but how does that enhance the affordance of insight (the trait)?

Recall the 9-dot problem from Part 1: People automatically project a square on the dots, and assume it is a connect the dot problem

Scaling Down (Meditative):

For true insight, one must first break up the gestalt (the framing) and de-automatize the cognition (not let it operate unconsciously and automatically) aka a shift from transparency-to-opacity (scaling down)

Scaling Up (Contemplative):

But one also needs to make an alternative and better framing. To scale up and find more widespread, pervasive patterns
Evidence from that scaling up helps insight (CC Bernard/ Baker)

Both scaling up and scaling down can make someone better at insight.
“Mindfulness is teaching us how to appropriate and train a flexibility of attentional scaling so that we can intervene effectively in how we are framing our problems and increasing our chance of insight when insight is needed.”

Mystical Experiences:

Through mindfulness, scaling up and scaling down at the extremes can also cause so-called mystical experiences (or higher states of consciousness) — often attributed to enlightenment.

Scaling-Down to the Extreme (Green box):

One can keep scale-down during meditative practice until someone has a pure-consciousness-event (PCE — coined by Forman)
During meditation you practice looking at your mind, then the subsidiary layer of your mind, and so on until the sense of self (ego) is shown to be an illusion but you are fully present as consciousness (PCE)

Scaling-Up to the Extreme (Blue box):

If you did the opposite and kept scaling up (contemplative practices) you’d see that everything is interconnected and ‘flowing’, like a gestalt that includes you in it. It’s a deep state of oneness with everything around you. (Resonant At-onement)
Super flow state

Perfect Balance: Non-Duality / Enlightenment

The third (ideal) state involves experiencing both a PCE and a state of oneness at the same time. This is non-duality
This is where your awareness is at the depths of your consciousness and into the depths of reality at the same time
This is a state of non-duality, called prajna. This is what leads to a comprehensive capacity for insight into one’s existential mode of being
This is likely what the Buddha experienced through his practice of Vipassana, and a contemplative practice called meta. One of his great innovations was to combine the two together
This is a deep peace

This leads to a comprehensive connection between the agent and the arena, and pushes that machinery to optimize and see (in a as deeply integrated a fashion as possible)the connectedness between the two.

But why is this significant?

Higher-States and its Significance:

These experiences are modal insights (Being-mode), a systematic insight that can fully transform the agent-arena relationship to bring about the alleviation of existential distress, and the affordance of enhanced meaning. There appear to be deep connections between awakening, recovering meaning, and insight.

Most of the world religions that emerged from the axial revolution are predicated on the idea that there are higher states of consciousness that should empower, challenge, and encourage us to engage ourselves in such quantum transformations.

This transformation is the experience of satori in Buddhism, moksha in Vedanta, and realizing the dao in Daoism. Even Western traditions such as mysticism. All the world traditions point towards these higher states of consciousness; they appear to be universal (Perennial Philosophy)

In other words, both qualitatively (historically) and quantitatively (scientifically) higher states of consciousness seem to be an important phenomenon.

To explain altered states of consciousness, we need to endeavor to explain consciousness — even if just the part of it relevant to HSC. That's what will be explored in Part 10.

Part 10: Consciousness

“Most people know that consciousness is a mystery, but most people don’t realize that what consciousness does is also a mystery.”

Global Workspace Theory:

One explanation is consciousness works like a desktop (computer metaphor):

The GBW theory suggests that unconscious processing can be integrated into working memory (desktop) to interact with specific information and then broadcast back to existing memory (unconscious)
We can’t access all our files at once because that’s overwhelming. We access the relevant files and information, transform those pieces in a way that’s relevant to us, and then broadcast the changes that are needed back to our ‘storage’
This means it is getting the relevant information from outside, the relevant information from inside (the mind) and searching through the vast amount of information to use it (chunking)

In this way, Vervaeke proposes a purpose of consciousness is to realise relevance (will come back to this in more depth) supported by work by Baars and Toroni.
This seems to be because consciousness is trying to track the complexity of the world: to find what is relevant (not complete account).

Salience Landscape & Optimal Grip:

But how is consciousness doing relevance realization? This puts together a lot of the concepts built up in the series so far.

Salience Landscape (Featurization):

Consciousness involves creating a salience landscape (which has four parts): Feature, foreground, figure, and frame.

Consciousness foregrounds and thus backgrounds things of differing salience, creating features (because you can’t process everything at once)
From these foregrounded features, one creates different figures (individual objects / affordances) (figuring-out)
These figures form different features (so it feeds back)
The whole landscape is the current frame — which also feeds back

This is a complex dynamical system that is highly flowing.

Landscapes of Cognition:

Salience landscape gets you in contact with features
Then, consciousness does what Merleau-Ponty calls getting an optimal grip on the relevant features using the attention structure (gestalt-feature + transparent/opaque)
This creates affordances to open up the agent-arena relationship for action
This is the presence landscape. You don’t see shapes and colors you see potential actions (sitting place, walkable area, watchable TV, graspable cup, ungraspable reflection)
Then consciousness identifies causal patterns from correlational patterns (like the discussions on flow in Part X). This then becomes the depth landscape

Salience Landscape + optimal grip = Presence Landscape.
Presence Landscape + identification causal patterns = Depth Landscape.

Failures and Errors of Landscapes:

We have failures of these landscapes all the time and it is related to wisdom

As an example of childhood errors in salience landscapes, discovered by renowned childhood development psychologist Piaget:

A 4-year-old prefers five candies arranged in a spread-out row over five candies in a compact row, despite knowing both rows have the same number of candies
The second row is more salient to them while we would consider the extra space not relevant
The child’s salience landscape is not able to do the necessary sizing-up, thus lacking the same affordances as adults
The development of biology is the development of the constraints within cognition (back to Aristotle and Juarrero from Part 6)

However, while we don’t fall prey to 4-year-old errors, we likely fall prey to many systematic illusions we are unaware of.

Transforming Consciousness:

The only way to become aware of them is to transform our salience landscape, presence landscape, and depth landscape so as to be able to pick up on the relevant information.

The ability to have a salience landscape that systematically tracks in-depth presence to zero in on relevant information and make life more meaningful produces a significance landscape. This landscape protects us from bullshitting, allows us to see through illusion, and affords a more comprehensive relationship with reality (act less foolishly)
The patterns you track, and the agent-arena relationship will be radically transformed. It’s not just a flash of insight like the 9-dot problem but rather, a systematic insight

An altered state of consciousness seem to generate such an insight; not an insight in consciousness it’s an insight of consciousness.

Formulating an Explanation for HSC:

While these higher states of consciousness generate systematic insight through a radical transformation of consciousness (significance landscapes), we need to explain how and why. Because these HSC are peculiar.

Despite being temporary and lacking viable explanations or coherence with our everyday experience, they feel more real and can cause significant changes in people’s lives. These states, these so-called ‘higher states’ should be the ones we most reject — but we say they are more real that everyday life
Realness is linked to intelligibility, as seen in Plato’s philosophy. Dreams are less intelligible than waking reality, so we consider them less real. Realness can be described as a wide and rich coherence of content
So how is it that that higher states of consciousness appear hyper-intelligible (relevant), even though they do not cohere with our waking reality

‘Peace Through Chemistry’ — Roy Lichtenstein (1970)

Descriptive Explanation:

What we need is a descriptive explanation of HSC
Cognitive scientific approach
A descriptive explanation involves an account of the underlying cognitive, neuroscientific and information processes (ideas drawn from AI and machine learning) at work that explain the nature of HSC

Prescriptive Explanation:

We also need a prescriptive account of these states
Do these states actually provide a rational justification and a guide for the transformations that people are claiming on their behalf? Are these states philosophically justifiable?
These states do not provide us with any special knowledge or new evidence in the way that science does, the states do not add to our propositional knowing. Rather, HSC involves a perspectival and participatory shift that the next few lectures will explore

In Part 11 & 12, we will outline this descriptive and prescriptive account of HSC, incorporating all the foundational concepts built up through the series.

Part 11 & 12: Higher-States of Consciousness

Descriptive Theory of HSC:

There are three components central to HSC:

How is the world being experienced?
How is the self being experienced?
How is the relationship between the self and the world being experienced?

How is the self being experienced?

Their autobiographical, egocentric self disappears (which is also what happens in the flow state), and they remember (sati) their ‘true self’ (profound connection inwards to the core of the self, and outwards to the underlying pattern that makes intelligible reality)
They describe this as a state of inner peace and harmony; the various components of their personality and cognition are in sync and work together in an optimal fashion
They often report that it’s the greatest sense of peace and joy they have ever experienced in their life
Joy is the positive emotion when experienced a deep connection to what is good

How is the world being experienced?

People report a tremendous sense of clarity; the world appears in a way that is very clear to them and makes sense in a way that hasn’t before
Perception of this Reality may be brighter (analogous to the flow experienced)
Original meaning of glory in the bible
Expansion of vision — but also cognizant of finer details
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand” — William Blake
Their ability to enhance attentional framing is improved, which increases their capacity for insight
The world feels ‘alive’, and they universally describe this experience as ‘beautiful’. (Connection between beauty and truth — Scarry book)
Pregnant with energy and significance
All this comes together in the sense of oneness

All in continuity with the flow state and insight

How is the relationship between the world and the self being experienced?

There’s a profound sense of ‘oneness’ amongst individuals who have experienced HSC.
They lose their sense of separate identity and feel like they have shared identity with reality — as if they are participating with it rather than in it
This is akin to Aristotle’s conformity theory of knowing in Part 7 (deeply formed from the core of their being)
This participatory knowing is so profound and transformative they say it is unifiable

‘Witch Doctor at the Eye of the Solar Epoch’ — Shawn Thornton (2008)

So, there is a deep continuity between flow experience and HSC just as there is between flow and insight. Insight is also in continuity with the HSC — it feels like an emergent phenomenon.

How is the self being experienced?

De-centering:

The experimenters also found that they tended to shift from a first-person/egocentric orientation to an allocentric/third-person perspective in their descriptions; they tended to de-center when they spoke about their HSC experiences. Reality appears to be so salient in a state of higher consciousness, that it eclipses the self-conscious, egoic-self (and become alo-centric)

“It’s like the salience of reality is finally capable of eclipsing the narcissistic glow of our own ego.”
For a moment we get release. (note: ‘nirvana’ means to blow out or extinguish. A kind of release.)

‘Seven Transmutations’ — Shawn Thornton (2019)

How is the world being experienced?

The super-salience of underlying reality that happens upon this insight is quite important to meaning in life also
The ability to find coherence and discover an intelligibly integrative pattern is essential to a sense that one’s life has meaning.

Heinzelman (2014) found that if people were able to find an underlying pattern between a set of pictures, they rated their lives as more meaningful.

In other words, the act of making sense and finding coherence makes people view their lives as more meaningful.
So, this HSC brings about a radical sense of deep intelligibility — not only of the world but of oneself.
If one gets enhanced meaning in life, coupled to an enhanced understanding in self — and it actually guides you in life — this creates a significant sense of confidence you are on the path to self-transcendence.

Fluency:

Why do people rate their lives as more meaningful after finding an underlying pattern? Does it have something to do with the ease of processing ability?

Topolinski and Reber (2010) provide some clarity on the processes at work in an insight experience. They describe insight as a ‘fluency spike’.

Fluency is how accessible (and therefore easy to process) information is to you. “How well your system is zeroing in on the relevant information.” Efficient processing of information.

For example:

Black vs orange text. Someone will rate the same text read in black more than the orange (on a white background) because of the ease of processing due to higher contrast
Psychotechnologies such as literacy improve cognitive power and fluency and enhanced sense of real information

So, this spike in fluency Reber suggests means that people experience HSCs as more real.

But this fluency heuristic is actually a very good strategy so may point to an underlying truth.

It’s actually generally the case (not always!) that in real-world situations this is true, so it’s a good strategy for your brain to have from a evolutionary standpoint

‘L’Hirondelle Steamer on the Seine‘ — Paul Signac (1901)

How is the relationship between the world and the self being experienced?

Dreyfus et al. talk about having an ‘optimal grip’ on cognition/ reality:

When attempting to perceive an unfamiliar object, individuals often seek a position that allows them to observe relevant details (zooming in) while still maintaining awareness of the overall picture (zooming out)
This cognitive approach also applies when categorizing objects, with individuals first categorizing at the basic level (e.g., “cat”) before moving up to a higher level (e.g., “mammal”)
The reason for defaulting to the basic level is to achieve the optimal grip, which involves maximizing similarity within a category while also maximizing difference between categories

“In a higher state of consciousness people are flowing in their cognitive capacity to perceptually — and even with the very machinery of their self — get an optimal grip on both the world and themselves.” Optimal grip on reality.

This goes beyond intellectual theories and propositional thought. It involves an intense experience of reality
And if there is a deep connection / continuity between flow / insight and HSC then that explains why disruptive strategies are so effective — because disruptive strategies are central to getting into flow

Putting it all together:

With increased fluency it is more likely picking up on real patterns
Insight allows a zeroing in on the patterns
Flow is an insight cascade which is zeroing in more on reality
And flow is coupled to implicit learning (picking up on bigger patterns not otherwise available to conscious)
So as one gets in these HSC the brain is acting very optimally to pick up on real patterns with increased fluency through a super-flow insight cascade
One gets an optimal grip on reality

Fluency → insight → flow → mystical experiences → transformative experiences. The same machinery is being used for each but is being progressively exapted.

‘Psychadelic Healing’ — Alex Grey (2021)

These leads to a hypothesis:

The Continuity Hypothesis:

We need a good explanation for what happens when one claims enlightenment or self-transcendence.

Fluency gets enhanced in an insight experience; insight gets enhanced in flow; flow experiences get enhanced into mystical experiences; and mystical experiences can bring about transformative experiences.

According to the continuity hypothesis, the cognitive machinery is being continually exapted into more powerful processing as it progresses from an insight experience to HSC and then transformative experiences
Newberg believes that if you have these little enlightenment experiences (fluency-insight-flow or glimpses) then it will eventually produce HSC. In this sense, it’s not just a continuity hypothesis, but also a priming hypothesis

This exaptation is happening at a psychological level, information processing level, and neurological level all at the same time — all affording us optimal grip on reality to encourage self-transcendence.

Psychological Level:

Grossman and Kross (2014) suggested that decentering strategies are especially important in the cultivation of wisdom

Solomon Effect: we are terrible at finding solutions to our own problems.
Automatically first-person perspective. But if decentered and re-describe in a third person — usually breaks frame and causes insight on the problem
By taking another perspective to their problem and decentering from their point of view, they are able to break the frame and often have a central insight into how they solve their problem
So in HSC, one is radically decentered from their perspective. Notice how egocentrism is not a single error in one problem but rather, a systematic error. This is why it is often described as ‘being asleep’; when you wake up

‘Yellow-Red-Blue’ — Wassily Kandinsky (1925)

Therefore, decentering involves a fundamental transformation of character.

One of the functions of your “self” is to act as glue. By making things relevant to myself I can make them relevant to each other and “glue” them together. The self is a powerful set of functions for integrating — complexifying — processing.

At the psychological level, we can understand HSC in terms of decentering, exaptation of the machinery, flowing optimal grip, and enhanced awareness of invariants. In this sense we can see why this machinery is operating and producing the experiential profile it’s producing.

Information Processing Level:

Disruptive strategies can also be used for training AI systems:

Woodward et al. (2014) emphasized the significance of noise, entropy, and randomness in training neural networks. They claim that randomness is essential for the self-optimization process.

Why?

The problem with powerful machines is that they can pick up patterns and overfit to the data
They can become too focused on the pattern in the sample, which may not generalize to the world
Disruption can prevent overfitting and allow the AI system to compress and find the real invariants. These are the real patterns that can generalize to all varying contexts
AI systems need to strike a balance between variation and compression to detect real patterns that allow them to become good learners

Disruptive strategies, set within powerful pattern detection, can help achieve this. This is the same system that is at work in people pursuing HSC.

Neurological Level:

Newberg et al. (2018) tracked brain activity during HSC experiences and found a particular pattern of activity in the frontal and parietal areas.

This frontal-parietal connection is primarily associated with one’s general intelligence and ability to make sense of the world and get an optimal grip on it
During this process, there is increased activity in the thalamus, the area of the brain that tries to integrate different kinds of information together

Metastability:

Metastability is a state where the brain is engaging in complexification, simultaneously integrating and segregating information (Kelso & Tognoli, 2014).

Normally, the brain integrates or segregates/differentiates information. However, on psilocybin and during HSC, you experience a state of metastability, which allows for complexification and new emergent functions

“Complexification gives you emergent functions. New abilities.”

Psilocybin effect on the brain — before & after

We now have an account of the psychological level, the machine processing level, and the neurological experience during an HSC that explains why these states are so powerful.

Now we need a prescriptive argument.

The Notion of Plausibility

The term ‘plausible’ has two senses:

Synonymous with ‘highly probable’
Referring to something that makes good sense, stands to reason, and should be taken seriously. This is the meaning we will use in this document

For plausibility two things are key: trustworthiness, and elegance:

Trustworthiness is a key factor in making something plausible. Something is trustworthy if it has been produced by many independent but converging lines of evidence. This convergence reduces the probability of self-deception
Elegance is also important. We need a model that can be applied to many new domains and is multi-apt

‘Gravitation’ — Mariusz Lewandowski (2019)

Processing the trustworthiness and elegance must also be highly fluent. When you have fluency, convergence, and elegance, you only need one more thing: a balance between convergence and elegance.

A lot of convergence without elegance results in triviality. Trivial statements may be true, but they lack power. They do not bring about transformation
Little convergence with a lot of elegance (aka a promise of power) is when things are far-fetched. e.g. conspiracy theories

When you have all of these things balanced you find the proposal deeply profound. And plausible. Which is all we have to go on.

Summary of HSC:

In summary: HSC are coming about by generating a highly dynamic optimal grip on reality. This is done by a continual exaptation of our cognitive processes
Fluency gets enhanced in an insight experience; insight gets enhanced in flow; flow experiences get enhanced into mystical experiences; and mystical experiences can bring about transformative experiences
This exaptation is happening at a psychological level, information processing level, and neurological level all at the same time — all affording us optimal grip on reality to encourage self-transcendence
The reason HSCs are described as more real is they are highly ‘plausible’. They are the perfect balance of trustworthiness, elegance, and fluency making the experience deeply profound

Now that we have explained mindfulness, and integrated a prescriptive and descriptive account of HSC (cognitive science) — in Part 13, we return to Buddhism to build a coherent interpretation of its teachings using our understanding.

Part 13: Buddhism and Parasitic Processing

Interpreting Buddhism in the West:

Next section inspired by Stephen Batchelor’s book: “The Awakening of the West”

Batchelor claims there is an interpretation crisis in understanding Buddhism. We are typically confronted with two approaches:

Only interpret from within a Tradition (not engaging through the transformative practice then not understanding right)

Problem: its myopic (many Buddhist traditions and relevant to time and culture) and subjective

2. Only interpret Buddhism from outside a tradition (religious studies and academics) — “objective account”

‘Cuitan Kedamaian in Bahasa’ — Sri Hidayat (2016)

This is similar to the problem Socrates faced: 1 = transformative relevance, 2 = truth. We must transcend both typical ways of viewing Buddhism. Each is fixated on beliefs.

(Later we will explore how breaking out of belief systems is required for addressing the meaning crisis)

Four Noble Truths:

The four noble truths should be understood as affordances/ provocations, not beliefs
The point is not to believe them, but to help re-enact the transformation of the Buddha
“The four ennobling provocations”

‘The False Mirror’— René Magritte (1929)

First Noble Truth:

“All is suffering” or “All of life is suffering”

As a belief, suffering is comparative and cannot be applied to everything (e.g. everything is tall).
Suffering originally meant to undergo or lose agency not pain/distress

Provocation: realise all of your life is threatened with the loss of freedom, the loss of agency.” The word for this type of loss is dukkha

And what does dukkha originally mean:

Etymology of is from the axial of a wheel
Imagine a wheel that is off-center on its axis. Since the axle is not properly centered, as the wheel turns/moves, it destroys itself
Dukkha refers to self-destructiveness (in Vervaeke’s view). The idea here is that one’s sense of agency is lost through self-destructive processes
Understanding the first truth as a provocation involves understanding that one’s life is existentially threatened by a capacity of self-destructive, self-deceptive behavior

‘The Double Secret’ — René Magritte (1927)

Parasitic Processing and Negative Feedback Loop:

So what is this self-destructive behavior. It is the opposite of self-transcendence, and as we have said multiple times: “the very processes that make us so adaptively intelligent also make us vulnerable to self-deceptive self-destructive behavior.” This is work by Vervaeke.

Parasitic Processing Diagram by Mark Mulvey

Now we’ll take a closer look at the processes that cause that:

Painful events trigger our brain’s prediction system for similar future events
This is an adaptive mechanism that reduces future threats
Heuristics, or shortcuts, help us navigate and focus on relevant information
The representativeness heuristic involves judging an event by its typicality and salience
The availability heuristic judges the probability of an event based on our memory and imagination
Emotionally charged states trigger encoding specificity, where memories are tied to the state we’re in
Negative emotional states make it harder to recall positive memories, reinforcing negative ones
The representativeness and availability heuristics interact with encoding specificity to create a negative feedback loop
Confirmation bias, where we only accept information that supports our negative beliefs, exacerbates the loop
This automatic, self-organizing process is difficult to escape
Self-organizing cognition saves time and energy, but can become problematic in certain situations
Focusing on negative events and overestimating their probability leads to increased anxiety
Anxiety reduces cognitive flexibility, making problem-solving more difficult
This can lead to fatalistic beliefs and misinterpretation of neutral events
The heuristics that make us adaptive can also make us vulnerable to self-destructive behavior

MSU & MIT Model for Depression (Wittenborn et. al, 2015)

The very things that make you so intelligently adaptive simultaneously make you vulnerable to self-deceptive, self-destructive behavior.”

This is parasitic processing. The reason it is so parasitic is it is self-organising and thus mold to attempts at intervention at single nodes.

The Reciprocal Narrowing Model of Addiction:

Marc Lewis’ theory:

Addiction alters the agent-arena relationship.
Negative feedback loop leads to reduced cognitive flexibility.
Reduced options lead to less agency and control.
Inflexible cognition and limited options reciprocally narrow.
Addiction involves participatory learning of loss of agency.

Addiction leads to a downward spiral of co-identification between the agent and arena, resulting in a reduction of cognitive flexibility and options. As a consequence, the sense of agency decreases and the world becomes smaller, ultimately leaving no options for personal growth and change.

Anagoge is the opposite = the move towards enlightenment

Dukkha results in a loss of agency through the reciprocal narrowing of the agent and arena due to parasitic processing. These processes reinforce each other, and the constant threat of this narrowing is pervasive. That is what Vervaeke interprets as the meaning of first noble truth.

‘The Fools Rule the World’ — Gyuri Lohmuller (2007)

Second Noble Truth:

“Suffering is caused by desire”

Dukkha happens when you get attached to something, not just when you really like it
Being attached involves a narrowing of yourself and the world
Attachment reduces your agency and options in the world
Addicts’ attachment is better understood as parasitic processing that leads to reciprocal narrowing
No alternatives other than the substance are available to the person in such cases

Third Noble Truth:

“Cessation of Suffering is Attainable”

Provocation: realize you can recover your agency
Reciprocal opening upwards is possible if there is a reciprocal narrowing downward
Use machinery to ascend towards enlightenment (Plato’s cave reference)
Realize that complex machinery and systems can be exapted to reduce self-deception. But how?

Fourth Noble Truth — The Eightfold Path:

The Buddha provided a psycho technology of practices to counter a complex dynamical system that works against you. This involves cultivating a counter-active system that operates in your consciousness and goes beyond your beliefs. The Buddha’s solution is the Eightfold Path.

Need to intervene at multiple nodes of the complex system to stop it from reorganizing

The Eightfold Path counteracts parasitic processing and promotes reciprocal opening
It helps us go beyond the egoic self and the everyday world
It’s represented by an eight-spoked wheel (chakra) and is a self-organizing system
Each part is interdependent on the other parts

The parts include:

Right understanding; Right thinking; Right speech; Right action; Right livelihood; Right mindfulness; Right concentration
The word ‘right’ refers to an optimal grip, not righteousness

Notice how ‘understanding’ and ‘thinking’ are about cognition, ‘speech’, ‘action’, and ‘livelihood’ are about character, and how ‘mindfulness’ and ‘concentration’ are about consciousness.
The Eightfold Path deals with ethical, existential, and sapiential aspects. It is an attempt to give us a counteractive dynamical system that can deal with parasitic processing, and reverse the reciprocal narrowing until we experience an awakening that takes us beyond the prison of the ego and the everyday world.

In Part 14, we will look at ideas about wisdom and self-transcendence post the Axial Revolution in the West. Eventually, this will be integrated within a current cognitive-scientific worldview.

[For Part 14–19 click here]