Analytic Idealism and the possibility of a meta-conscious cosmic mind

Analytic Idealism and the possibility of a meta-conscious cosmic mind

Prof. Richard Grego, PhD

Does Analytic Idealism limit the scope of its own conclusions and implications because of its adoption of realist, empirically-focused, scientific concepts and argument structures? If so, can the notion of a meta-conscious (that is, self-aware, deliberate) universal consciousness be reconciled with it? Dr. Grego argues precisely so in this critical essay.

Notwithstanding all the merits of his theory, however, Kastrup’s own elaborations on one of its tenets sometimes seems inconsistent with it—especially regarding its central feature: universal consciousness itself. He has stated in many places that universal consciousness is most likely not meta-conscious and that, in this sense, does not entail any personal, intentional, or self-aware aspect at its most fundamental level. While Analytic Idealism does not automatically exclude this possibility, he argues, the empirical evidence we have about what meta-conscious awareness and experience might be seems to suggest that universal consciousness is not fundamentally meta-conscious or personal in any second-order way. The reason for his drawing this conclusion is that the history of the physical universe, and the development of meta-conscious minds via biological evolution, indicates that meta-conscious mental states were not present at the inception of the universe, and therefore are not fundamental to universal consciousness itself. It took several billion years of cosmological development and biological evolution for meta-conscious individuated intellects to emerge. The development of individuated, meta-conscious identity seems, by this logic, attributable to the process of biological evolution in physical space-time [3]. Moreover, Kastrup has also doubled down on this attribution by describing the epistemic limitations of individuated meta-conscious minds in these kind-of-physicalist terms (“Just monkeys on a rock in space”) [4].

However, this portrayal of universal consciousness, meta-consciousness, and physical reality seems inconsistent with the basic tenets of Analytic Idealism. It sounds as though—despite the illusional status of the physical universe—Kastrup is nonetheless claiming that human consciousness is somehow a causal product of biological evolution occurring in space-time. This claim seems to reverse completely the actual causal direction running from universal consciousness to individuated meta-consciousness to the physical universe, as well as invert the ontological priority of universal consciousness to its physical forms. Analytic Idealism holds that the physical world is a construct of individuated meta-conscious observation, which, in turn, is an excitation of universal consciousness. So, the contention that meta-consciousness is a product of physical evolution inverts this causal process.

... Direct experience of pure awareness via meditation, trance-possession, mystical intuition, prayer, psychedelics, near-death or out-of-body experience, etc., do much to permeate the dissociation that separates individuated minds from universal consciousness. Since, by transcending and dissolving the dissociative barriers between individuated consciousness and universal consciousness, this kind of phenomenological encounter engages universal consciousness directly (and more deeply-intimately than scientific analysis), it would seem like a much better basis on which to speculate about the nature of universal consciousness. (To employ another of Kastrup’s analogies here: speculating about universal consciousness via the abstractions of physical science, instead of via direct conscious experiences, is like speculating about nature outside of the blindly-flying airplane via the data from its dials and meters, instead of opening its cargo door and looking out directly at the sky, clouds, weather, and ground below)...

[Laird]

It's an important critique and question: where is God in all this?!

It doesn't, though, get to the heart of the logical problems with Analytic Idealism: even adding God back in as is right and proper isn't going to save it from those problems, and in fact is going to make them worse; after all, even if a universal mind "dissociating" into psyches could be successfully defended as an all-encompassing ontology (it can't), the idea of a self-aware, intelligent, and volitional God undergoing dissociation - a process implying involuntariness and lack of control - is even less plausible than Analytic Idealism's orthodox idea of a universal mind lacking "meta consciousness" undergoing same, especially given that the conventional idea of God as Creator (rather than as Dissociator) is much more plausible.