The Mind-Reality Fallacy - A Challenge to Ken Wilber

In the process of reclaiming spirit as part of a rational worldview, we must address the recent that attempts to integrate Eastern Mysticism and the Western scientific worldview. Specifically we must deal with the most powerful and prodigious writer and thinker in this so-called "integration of East and West," Ken Wilber.

Ken Wilber has offered a developmental understanding of matter and consciousness that many people (myself included) consider to be the most cogent work ever done on the subject. First, I think it only fair to say that I have tremendous respect for the sheer volume and luminosity of Wilber's attempt to synthesize the mysticism of the East with the rational philosophy of the West.

Further, I agree with many of his basic insights about the nature of human consciousness in its non-mystical aspects. I agree with most every aspect of his work except one. This aspect of his work is not crucial or pivotal to his overall scheme, but it does severely compromise (if not invalidate) some of the fundamental conclusions he arrives at regarding the "highest" levels of consciousness, particularly the non-dual. This leaves an opening for pre-rational thought that I find tremendously problematic and completely unnecessary.  (Note: In a later interview Ken cleared this up.  He agrees with me.)

This basic problem runs throughout his work and contaminates many of his otherwise powerful and accurate formulations. I will first describe and address the central flaw in his work and later suggest how we might separate out his excellent contributions from his fallacious conclusions.

The Mind/Reality fallacy

The basic challenge I have with Wilber is that he commits a key logical fallacy at the heart and conclusion of his work that I will call the "experience/reality fallacy," or the "mind/reality fallacy."

Essentially, the mind/reality fallacy consists of equating my personal experience of existence with existence itself. In the negative, "if it is not part of my experience, it does not exist." In the positive, it is that "my experience of reality contains all of reality."

Specifically, it is the idea that because my personal experience includes everything which exists for me in the here and now, that there is not a separate reality which extends beyond my personal experience in other times and places. It is the idea that my experience contains the totality of the universe. This includes other galaxies, other planets, the other side of the planet, the other side of the city I am in, and the experience of the person next door. In its most gross form (which goes well beyond what Wilber suggests, but which is routinely concluded from this aspect of his work), it claims that existence itself is a function and creation of consciousness. In the vernacular, it claims that "thought creates reality."

The opposite understanding of the mind/reality fallacy is that my experience of reality is only one small piece of reality, and an infinitesimally small piece at that. Specifically, it is the idea that every aspect of objective reality exists as a separate entity whether or not I am aware of it. This includes other galaxies, other planets, the other side of the planet, the other side of the city I am in, and the experience of the person next door. All of these are outside of my conscious experience, but still exist in their own right completely separate from my consciousness.

This latter distinction underlies the fundamental ideas of science, and forms the foundation of most of the decisions we make on a daily basis. However, the former idea that there is no reality outside our consciousness has a tradition extending back to Plato in philosophy, and has enjoyed a recent resurgence in postmodern philosophy, religious studies, and especially in the New Age movement. In fact, in intellectual circles, it has subtly worked its way into most every discussion of social science and political debate.

This is not to gainsay the fact that on a sub-atomic level, all of the universe can be said to be "one thing." Nor does it gainsay the fact that space/time is a continuum. Not only does it seem that all of existence intimately connected on a sub-atomic level, it also seems to made of the same essential "thing," whether that be "energy" "strings" "matter" "spirit" or whatever we choose to call it. However, this does not alter the fact that on the atomic level distinct entities exist. Nor does it alter the fact that the evolutionary chain of development has created separate plants and animals with separate consciousnesses. My consciousness does not include what my neighbor is experiencing in this moment, let alone a peasant in China, nor a being in the Alpha Centauri system.

The Tree in the Forest

Let us examine an example of how this mind/reality fallacy has become part of the common consciousness of the western mind though an example we are all familiar with. There is an infamous question at the heart of "speculative metaphysics" that is so easily put that is has become part of common American culture, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

The answer to this question is supposedly paradoxical because "unless there is a human being there to observe what happens, we can't know the answer." However, this answer is simply inaccurate, and the whole question is a superficial problem at best.

Like virtually all so-called "paradoxes" the challenge of answering this question is a semantic one. The answer depends on how we use or define the word "sound." In one meaning, (#1), a sound is the experience a human being has when vibrations traveling though the air impact their ear drum and cause a set of neurological responses which registers in consciousness. In another meaning, (#2) a "sound" is a set of vibrations traveling through the air which WOULD cause a neurological responses that register in a human consciousness, if a person was present to be so impacted by those vibrations.

If we use meaning #1, then the answer is "no" it does not make a "sound" because no human hears it. If we use meaning #2 then the answer MUST BE "yes" because it is a question of the basic laws of physics describing the vibrations that occur when objects collide which apply regardless of whether or not a human being is present. Hence, once we have the semantic issue clear, the answer is straightforward. There is nothing challenging or "metaphysical" about it.

Hence, addressing and defining the semantic context easily solves the whole "metaphysical" issue associated with the question. The only way that it could be a "metaphysical" issue is if we assert that the laws of physics only operate in contexts where humans are observing, which would contradict the basic foundations at the heart of physics itself. Such an assertion is just one more example of the mind/reality fallacy.

Dual and Non-Dual Experience and the Mind/Reality Fallacy

This mind/reality fallacy is at the heart of Wilber's (and every other mystical writer and "teacher" I am aware of) mystical interpretation of reality. In the mystical tradition, a "simple" claim is made. Namely, that if you meditate effectively on the nature of consciousness, you will come to discover that 1) everything you experience as "existence" is in your consciousness; 2) that you are not other than everything that experience in consciousness.

In other words, YOU are consciousness itself, and since everything you experience is "in" your consciousness, YOU ARE THAT; namely, you are, at your essence, not other than everything you are experiencing: that you are all of existence itself!

The basic logic behind that claim is quite simple, though built squarely on the mind/reality fallacy. Let us examine this in more detail.

First, mystics note that everything that we experience in our lives is experienced in consciousness. There are no experiences we EVER have which are outside of consciousness. This is quite straightforward, and typically easily understood. It is true, almost by definition. If we "experience" it, we experience it "in consciousness."

Next they simply claim that when we examine the concept of "I," we discover that that is also just a thought we have. We can never experience the "I" but only infer its existence after the fact. In the same way, we do not see our own eyeballs, but see through them.

However, our normal and conventional concept of "I" is what we understand our Self to be. We might normally say that "I" am the one who experiences all of the parts of my experience. It is the concept of "I" that we use to differentiate between "Me" and "not me." This experience of "I" and "not I" is the fundamental "duality" of experience. It is the difference between subject and object.

When we recognize that concept of "I/ME" is just another concept, we lose the fundamental distinction that sources our experience of duality, our distinction between subject and object. When we deconstruct this experience of "I" the distinction between subject and object disappears and we are left with everything being part of the subject without "other" on the one hand (I am everything I experience), and everything being part of the object (I am not that, not that).

In this "non-dual" experience, all distinctions that are built on the subject/object distinction (which includes most all of human language) begin to sound paradoxical and impossible. For example, if we were to attempt to describe our experience of the non-dual we might say that "I am both everything that exists in my experience and none of the things in my experience," or "I am not other than everything in my experience, and I am not anything in my experience."

In other terms, when we disconnect our self identity (small "s") from the concept of "I" (through the process of meditation), we identify our Self (capital "S") with the totality of ALL experience. "We" come to understand our Self as not "other" than everything which exists in our experience, although to say that "I am that" suggests that there is an "I" which experiences it, but I am not that!"

The fact is that, when I perform the experiment of inquiring into the nature of my experience, I find this to be a natural and virtually unavoidable conclusion. I believe it speaks to a deep feature of human consciousness.

Mysticism and the Mind/Reality Fallacy

However, the mystics go beyond this simple though profound truth and claim that in this state of consciousness (Nirvana, enlightenment, satori) we become "one with everything," or "one with all reality." (I will examine the experiential accuracy of this claim below.) Here is the mind/reality fallacy bold and clear. They make the false jump from "I am one with (not other than) all that I experience in consciousness" to "I am one with all of existence, with the entire universe." In the process, they invalidate their position and confuse their experience of one aspect of reality with the totality of reality itself.

Again, this is not to gainsay the idea that all consciousness is of the same nature, and that at all conscious beings participate in that same nature. It may be true that all experience of consciousness, at its core is "the same" or has radically similar features/qualities across human experience/cultures through time. Like a cup of water taken from the ocean, it has the same structure as all water, even if it is only an infinitesimally small "piece" of the "whole" ocean.

However, this does not alter the fact that the cup of water I take from the California Coast is distinct from the cup of water my Japanese friend takes from off the Japan Coast. The particular blend of bacteria, dirt, and detritus in my water will certainly be different, and the water itself, although it is equally "water," is "different water" than my friend's in Japan. There is information in my water which is not in his, and vice versa. This is true about water on earth, or water on any other planet in the universe.

At its heart, the mystical claim enlightenment makes us "one with the entire universe or the ONE/ALL" is based on mistaken logic that invalidity extrapolates from a lone human consciousness to the entirety of the universe. This mystic claim is built squarely on the mind/reality fallacy and falls apart when this is understood. Once we understand that "being one with all of MY experience" (everything that is in the consciousness associated with my body right now) is NOT equivalent to being one with all of reality everywhere and at every time, the mistake of the mystical conclusion becomes apparent.

Wilber has woven this mistaken mysticism into almost every aspect of his work, and creates significant problems in the accuracy or his work, especially when describing the highest developmental levels of consciousness. However, if one is extremely careful, one can tease out the aspects of Wilber's philosophy that are not tainted with the mind/reality fallacy and discover that most of his system is unaffected.

The Psychological Uses of Meditation

So, given that the mystical world view as common proposed/propounded is built on a fundamental fallacy, is there any value in the teaching of mystical sages and meditative practices?

Yes, as long as they are understood psychologically rather than philosophically. When the mind/reality fallacy is clearly understood and applied to "mystical" practices, it becomes possible to separate out the baby from the bath water.

While meditation cannot, because it involves the consciousness of a single individual, tell us about other parts of the globe or universe, it can tell us much about the processes of mind and consciousness that determine how we experience our own lives. Further, it can provide possible models to describe the nature of human consciousness itself; the fundamental structures which underlie all human experience. Finally, to the degree that the structure of consciousness reflects the inherent order in the universe, by understanding human consciousness, we may gain insight into the workings of the universe itself.

In the place of mystical pronouncements, we can simply say that "Eastern spiritual practices," including meditation, yoga, and numerous other techniques, can be used as tools to understand the process by which our mind translates light waves (sights), sound waves (hearing), physical pressure (touch), and chemical stimulation of the nose and mouth (taste and smell) into a coherent experience of reality. They are practices designed to train our minds to concentrate and observe the very processes of thought which normally work beneath conscious awareness, and determine how we experience, understand, and react to any situation we find ourselves in.

This is a glorious and wonderful process by any understanding, and incredibly important to study in order to understand the nature of human experience. I personally find the study of such aspects of my internal experience fascinating and helpful in understanding the source of my various psychological and emotional states. Through such understanding, I learn to recognize those times when my mind is running on auto-pilot and gain more choices about what and how I think about my life situations. This increased knowledge and flexibility is invaluable in creating an enhanced experience of life, both internally and in my relationships with others. While the field of experimental psychology tends to study patterns of behavior and thinking of averages of people, the introspective practices of meditation and yoga study the patterns of mind intrapersonally, within our own mind.

In this sense, meditation is simply the detailed and systematic observation of the process of consciousness itself, and an invaluable tool in the fulfillment of the basic injunction of human development: "Know thy Self." In this understanding, it is a method of inquiry that can be used by any/everyone to investigate his or her fundamental experience as human beings. In this light, it is an important addition to western psychology and science in the understanding of human experience.

However, given the extensive history of mysticism's use of the mind/reality fallacy and its co-option into religions of all types, it is critical to differentiate the conclusions of past mystical "sages" from the tools which they used to get their results. When we apply the critique of the mind realty fallacy to the religions that promote meditative and contemplative awareness, we can differentiate out the wheat (the psychological insights provided through meditation) and the chaff (the mystical descriptions of a consciousness that embraces and sources the entire universe.

Mark Michael Lewis