The Consciousness Panel

Here is hard objective evidence that I moderated the consciousness panel at Sages & Scientists. That half-face on the left is Deepak Chopra. Seeing my name and face on a big screen freaks me out.

HOBOKEN, SEPTEMBER 16, 2024.  Last Friday I took a train to Cambridge, MA, to attend Sages & Scientists, a three-day “Conscious Collaboration for Global Transformation” hosted by health/spirituality mogul Deepak Chopra. Saturday 8-8:45 am I moderated a panel called “Awakening to Truth: Consciousness as the Fundamental Reality,” in which Chopra and four other speakers talked about how the universe consists primarily not of matter but of consciousness. Below is my subjective, impressionistic, one-sided account of the session. If your memory or a recording of the event contradicts me, let me know. -- John Horgan

Wake up, clock says 8:20 am. What?! Oh shit! I slept through Awakening panel! Jump out of bed, pull on pants, thinking, Maybe they started late, maybe they’re waiting for me…

Wake up, clock says 5:50 am. Phew! That was just a dream, false awakening. Plenty of time to make Awakening session at 8, especially since it’s right here in Hyatt Hotel.

Haven’t had a performance-anxiety nightmare in a long time. Why now? Subconsciously nervous about this gig? Calm down, lie in bed, brood over questions for panel.

Shower, dress, 7:30 take glass-walled elevator to first floor. Run into Deepak, he tells me Donald Hoffman can’t attend in person but recorded five-minute video, we’ll start session with that. Cool, I say.

Amesbury Ballroom already packed, hundreds of people hubbubbing. Make way to front row, find other speakers: Stuart Hameroff, anesthesiologist who for decades has pushed quantum theory of consciousness co-invented with physicist Roger Penrose; Menas Kafatos, physicist with his own quantum theory; Neil Theise, pathologist who links consciousness to complexity theory.

Remind them what I said via zoom early August: each gets five minutes to pitch his big idea, then I’ll ask follow-up questions, which I’m not giving them in advance, because I want to surprise them. Hameroff grumbles over lack of time, but he and others accept my plan.

Poonacha Machaiah, CEO of Chopra Foundation and MC for weekend, takes the stage, leads us in a Hindu (?) prayer, introduces moderator for first discussion, “science journalist John Horgan.” Feel frisson of derealization hearing name spoken in public, seeing it on giant screen.

My photo of someone taking a photo of Chopra, right, in a session that wasn't mine. Everything is meta, man.

Stride across stage to scattered applause and sit in one of five chairs. Room falls silent, I’m alone, in the spotlight. A digital clock at the edge of the stage is counting down the time, 40 minutes left. Speak into handheld mike: Hi everyone. Hearing amplified voice gives me sense of power, confidence. Continue:

This morning we’re going to solve one of the deepest, oldest mysteries. What is reality made of? When I started writing about science 40 years ago, the answer was obvious: reality is made of matter. At some point matter gave rise to life here on earth. Then one kind of life, the kind in this room, became conscious. The idea that matter is the basis of everything is called materialism, and that’s science’s default stance. But recently some scientists have challenged materialism. We’re going to hear from five of these scientists this morning. First up is cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, who couldn’t be here but recorded a five-minute video message.

Hoffman appears on giant screens and calmly says consciousness yada yada reality yada yada matter yada yada illusion yada yada. When Hoffman is done everyone politely claps and I say, Okay, next is Stuart Hameroff. Stu, five minutes. Stu says wave function blah blah collapse blah blah microtubules blah blah spacetime Penrose blah blah. Stu blows past five-minute mark and I’m about to interrupt when he falls silent.

I say Next up is Menas Kafatos. With charming warm smile Menas describes a theory that isn’t the same as Hameroff/Penrose theory but still relies on spooky quantum effects and he stops with seconds to spare. Good man.

Neil Theise speaks with great sincerity about how contemplative practice changed him from a matter-first guy into a consciousness-first guy who sees consciousness as intrinsic property of a complex universe and I think these are all good guys seekers like me I shouldn’t give them a hard time and now it’s time for Deepak, sitting right next to me.

Deepak, five minutes, I say. He says Time is an illusion and I say Not for me, I’m keeping track, and the crowd titters and Deepak smiles and in his sonorous hypnotic voice tells us that below our individual thoughts and feelings and perceptions lies an awareness that transcends time and space and I’ve heard this before but I wait politely for him to finish and he does right on time because he’s a pro and I say:

I’m an old acid head, so I have doubts about materialism too, but I feel obliged to push back a little against what’s been said here. So let me just point out that consciousness can’t be objectively quantified or measured. The neuroscientist Christof Koch has talked about a device that measures consciousness the way a thermometer measures temperature, but a consciousness-meter doesn’t exist yet and I suspect it never will. If we can’t measure consciousness, does that mean all this speculation we’ve just heard will never be scientific and will always remain in the realm of philosophy and even spirituality?

Even before I finish panelists are thrusting their hands up. Stu points out that yeah consciousness is hard to measure but anesthesia provides a way of distinguishing between conscious and unconscious states. Deepak says measurement is a product of subject/object duality and consciousness transcends that duality so of course it can’t be measured.

I turn to the audience and say:

I just want to point out, in case you missed it, that I asked if theories of consciousness are scientific in the sense that they can be tested and potentially verified, and the panelists’ answer is NO.

Panelists’ hands fly up again, but I say:

Sorry, we don’t have time to dwell on that, I need to raise one more point before we’re done. We humans are all narcissists, we think we’re at the center of things. Religion reflects our narcissism, all religions say the universe is just a stage for our spiritual unfolding. Science counters our narcissism, it puts us in our place, and I worry that your theories take us back to that old narcissistic outlook by making consciousness, a human attribute, the most fundamental property of reality.

Deepak looking sternly into my eyes through his jeweled glasses says I have totally misunderstood him. His view is the opposite of narcissism, because the consciousness from which everything springs transcends ego, the individual self, it is formless and infinite and eternal.

As Deepak transfixes me with his eyes and voice, my derealization surges back, I fear the pressure of his gaze and the audience’s gaze might shatter my fragile little ego and I’ll revert to the primordial consciousness whence I came and ooze off my chair onto the stage of Amesbury Ballroom.

What saves me is that everything seems so funny, so weird and loopy, that I can’t stop grinning. As Deepak pauses, I glance at the digital clock at the edge of the stage. The red numbers are counting down: 20 seconds, 19, 18.

We’re out of time! I say. Thank the panelists for stimulating discussion as audience applauds. As derealization fades I find myself back inside my cozy little dream cave again, safely unawakened. Phew.

Further Reading:

For some sense of what the panelists said, check out interviews of the show Closer to Truth with Donald Hoffman, Stuart Hameroff, Menas Kafatos and Neil Theil.

If you dig this stream-of-consciousness schtick, check out my book Pay Attention and these columns: The Consciousness Salon, My Daily Routine and Why I Quit a Class on Zen.

For more on my views of consciousness, see my books Mind-Body Problems and My Quantum Experiment and my columns The Rise of Neo-Geocentrism, Can a Mood Be True?, The Brouhaha Over Consciousness and “Pseudoscience”, The Dark Matter Inside Our Heads and The Solipsism Problem.