Recently, an article appeared in Popular Mechanics magazine, one which made mention of a report written some 40 years ago which involved the strange possibility of converting our minds and bodies into a laser beam of sorts that could transcend spacetime, and in doing so, provide us with intuitive knowledge about our universe; in addition to allowing us to somehow connect to multiple energy fields. The project of which these seemingly obscure ideas were a part, The Gateway Project, was originally one that was the brainchild of Robert Monroe, a radio producer who had previously studied the effect of certain sound patterns on human consciousness.

As esoteric and possibly downright strange as such a study might be, still it at least may tangentially involve a question which has seemingly hung over both materialistic science and experiential consciousness, as well as their possible unification for some time now. That is, how to potentially unify empirical science with the possibility of a transcendent consciousness? Or to stand the question on its head, how might one in fact use rational thought and empiricism to prove the existence of a consciousness that is somehow otherworldly in nature? Or to put an even finer point on the matter, is such a thing even possible or necessary?

Mentioned in the article were several techniques and practices, adopted over the years, by which people might control their minds and their bodies; among them being biofeedback, transcendental meditation, kundalini yoga, and hypnosis, all of them being concerned with simultaneously controlling one’s mental energy in conjunction with one’s bodily processes. In addition, nearly all of them claim to assist someone in achieving a larger awareness or state of consciousness. However, at the same time, with none of these, it would seem, has someone been actually able to prove to others, through an account of their personal experience, that that transcendent experience is indeed real, and not simply a product of their imagination; which means of course that that missing link between empirical science and experiential consciousness still does not exist.

More than anything, what most likely stands in the way of that occurring is that the expansive, transcendent consciousness alluded to in the article can’t possibly exist on the other side of cognitive, logical proof. That is, it must be experienced through the depth of one’s impressionistic life simply because by definition it exists beyond thoughts, words, ideas, or any attempt to describe it. So if this is so, how might someone demonstrate to another person, beyond any sort of empirical proof that the expansive consciousness which they have experienced is real? That is to say, can actual consciousness effectively pass from one person to another as validation of the larger consciousness which one has experienced?

Ironically, a potential key to answering this question may actually exist in the midst of an experiment conducted in the late 1700s by a British physician and physicist. Thomas Young decided to study what would happen to a beam of light if it was observed passing through a double-slit barrier. Would it change its behavior so to speak if it was observed doing so compared to it not being observed? What Young found was that if it was observed passing through the barrier, the light beam would choose one of the slits to pass through, while if it was not observed passing through the barrier it passed through all possible slits simultaneously. In other words, mere observation of the light beam in effect changed its behavior.

Therefore, it terms of human beings, it would appear that the question which needs to be asked here is if it might be possible for a mental state of full creative absorption and heightened attention, one which is devoid of any further action, to not only change the reality in which one lives, but likewise be passed on to another person through a consciousness which is fluid. If it is indeed possible for this to occur, then it also seems possible that a larger, transcendent consciousness which one person is experiencing might then be shared with someone else as confirmation that this larger awareness actually exists.

Furthermore, if this fluid consciousness could actually be passed from one person to another, then this type of confirmation, it would seem, might in fact abrogate the need for the sort of empirical validation of a transcendent consciousness discussed here previously. Consequently, it might likewise mean that the proof that certain mental, emotive, or larger expansive states of consciousness actually exist could in fact become real in a whole new way. This would appear to be something that we all should consider in lieu of contemporary discussions of a consciousness or intelligence that some believe can be proved to exist through A.I. or other virtual approaches to reality which are increasingly becoming part of all our lives.

The brilliant film Tar, directed by Todd Field and starring Cate Blanchet, is now receiving its share of accolades during the traditional awards month which takes place every year, particularly Blanchet’s performance as the brilliant but manipulative symphony orchestra conductor Lydia Tar. However, there are some critics who are ostracizing the film for being a representation of a lesbian woman in a position of power who is acting badly, as if due to our present cultural ethos, one does not have the right to criticize someone for their behavior in certain professions if they happen to be gay.

The movie is a tense, brilliant depiction of a powerful woman wandering within a shadowy hall of mirrors of her own making due to her past insensitive behavior toward others, including members of her own orchestra. What is so important about the film is that it allows us all to look inside the contemporary world of cancel culture so that we might more completely come to terms with its inner dynamics. That is, if one allows oneself to become fully immersed in the film, one is almost able to experience oneself rapidly disintegrating as one’s life and career go suddenly off the rails in a manner similar to Tar’s. As a result, it is an extremely personal, inside look at the forces inherent in a culture determined to destroy anyone whose behavior they find offensive.

Of course there is the issue of Tar behaving manipulatively with others in a sometimes cruel way in order to get what she wants. When she decides that there will be a cello concerto by Elgar played at an upcoming concert, she arranges for a young cellist with whom she is infatuated to be given the performance over a more experienced long-time member of the orchestra. When a former member of the orchestra whom Tar had unsuccessfully pursued romantically begs for recommendations so she can be employed at another orchestra, Tar refuses to help. And she mercilessly bullies a young violin student at the college where she teaches for not agreeing with her about the value of the music of Bach.

Yet at the same time it seems hard to hate Tar because of the intense passion she brings to the music for which she is responsible; this being something that is almost inevitably part of a talented person who our present day cancel culture criticizes for their past indiscretions. Often what seems troubling about these situations is that a person’s past bad behavior is inevitably conflated with whatever talents they might bring to contemporary culture, as if the first inevitably diminishes the second. That is, one can think of any number of musicians, actors, writers and directors who have had their particular talents disparaged simply because of the previous difficult behavior of which they are accused.

If there is indeed an indirect message among others in Tar about the terrifying retribution inherent within contemporary cancel culture. as one is able to experience firsthand in Todd Field’s film, it may well be that the punishment for some high-profile person wh0 has acted badly is in danger of now becoming implicit in the world of their particular art or talent. Yes, of course, if one has somehow damaged other people, there should most definitely be a consequence for that, possibly even a legal one. However, that particular consequence should not necessarily extend into the particular art or talent which they have given to the world. For if somebody’s particular artistic creation can be somehow diminished by their bad behavior, then all artistic expressions are at risk of becoming entirely subjective.

Lydia Tar’s punishment in the film is a psychological one as she experiences the laudatory world which she has always known begin to collapse around her due to her insensitive behavior. However, does that mean that she’s not the same great conductor with the same love of classical music? Of course not. In fact, there is a dramatic scene toward the end of the film in which she watches with tears in her eyes Leonard Bernstein, one of her favorite conductors, lead a discussion with young people about the meaning and beauty of classical music. You can punish someone for their bad behavior, which we all have a certain right to do, but you can’t ever take away the right they have to love their art.

In The New York Times recently, an article appeared delineating how Dr. Hod Lipson, director of the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University and an Israeli-born roboticist sat behind a table in his lab, explaining the potential adaptability of robots and other A.I. machines, something which he argued would become more important as people became more reliant on machines. Likewise, he discussed how as robots become more significant in our lives in terms of such areas of endeavor as surgical procedures, food, manufacturing, and transportation, any error in their functions could be disastrous for us.

As Dr. Lipton said, if we’re literally going to surrender more and more of our lives to robots, we want the machines to be resilient. In order to make this occur, Lipton recommended that we take our inspiration from both animals and humans, both of whom are good at adapting to change. Yes, of course both humans and animals are good at adapting to change, as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has proved time and again. Yet at the same time, there is a quality that only humans and possibly some members of the animal kingdom possess which A.I machines will never possess; this being the possibility of a consciousness rooted in their sensorial and emotive lives, onr upon which they can reflect.

In fact, during a period of time in which our working memories, our attention spans, and the stream of our thoughts are under attack from the digital age and the devices which we all now so obsessively use, it seems now more important than ever that we seek the possibility of a larger consciousness which exists on the other side of thought, memory, and even knowledge. That is, one which is less anchored in our cognitive lives and increasingly anchored in the sort of direct insight into the dynamics of both our world and ourselves which stems from an enriched sensorial life and likewise a deeper emotive one.

On the other hand, if we succumb to making A.I machines an increasing part of our intelligence, this larger, more expansive consciousness born of direct insight will never occur as people continue to focus more and more on the sort of purely cognitive activities, particularly memory, that A.I. machines are so good at, just as so many people have become fascinated and obsessed by the Internet and digital devices since both came into our lives a number of years ago. More than anything, it seems imperative that we realize that intelligence itself is certainly much more than thought and memory. As much as anything, it has significantly to do with insight, and with the potential strength of one’s emotive and sensorial life, something at which a machine, even one that can accomplish highly complex tasks, is not so adept.

This week’s New York Times highlighted a 2018 film, The Feeling of Being Watched, a documentary by young Muslim filmmaker Assia Boundaoui, which told the story of how the residents of the Muslim community in the suburban Chicago community of Bridgeview came to believe that they were the victims of an unjustified surveillance by the FBI over a number of years; the film effectively telling the story of how such a surveillance can become an end in itself simply because the fear of being watched can lead to a fear of speaking out, regardless of whether anyone is actually watching. As Ms. Boundaoui says in the film in voice-over, “That grey area between paranoia and the truth is a dangerous place.”

In similar fashion, the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre’s lifelong friend the lover, wrote of how modern women face a certain similar existential bind in having to develop their own viewpoint toward their life and the world at the same time that they have become the viewpoint of others, in particular men, where they become both observer and observed, something which necessarily has a profound effect on their personal freedom.

Now, with the coming of our present digital age, it seems that we are all up against the same existential crisis as the Muslim community of Bridgeview and Simone de Beauvoir faced, one in which we are made to feel that we are being perpetually watched even as we attempt to make sense of our world. That is, any statement we make online, however seemingly innocuous it might seem, becomes immediate fodder for someone who might choose to misinterpret it. In similar fashion, the digital memories inside powerful search engines inside our phones and computers often know where we’ll navigating next in cyberspace even before we do.

In fact, the algorithms of Google and other search engines are now not only able to feed us information that they have already gathered about us, but also direct us to where we should travel next on the Web even before we have decided to do so ourselves by simply catching our eye with what they already know we may want to see next based on where we have already traveled. Anyone who has ever searched Amazon or begun receiving spam e-mails from out of the blue based on their personal search history knows this eventuality all too well.

Except the real difference between what Assia Boundaoui and Simone de Beauvoir endured and our present plight in the digital age is that their freedom was being controlled and impeded externally, so to speak, while for those of us who are potential victims in cyberspace, the impediment to our freedom is entirely internal. That is whereas before, the plight of those two women is part of their long-term memories and personal experience, albeit the result of difficult dynamics in their lives, now the very neural pathways inside out brains, simply because we are in effect outsourcing our memories and the pattern of our thoughts to large search engines, are being controlled and directed from the outside.

Consequently, our loss of personal freedom has now become a dynamic that resides inside the same patterns of thought and memory that we might use to combat such a development in the way Ms. Boundaoui and Ms. Beauvoir combatted their particular predicaments that were keeping them less free. That is, our mental freedom, in a very real sense, faces a much more serious challenge to its continued development simply because the very things we have always used to envision and maintain such a freedom, our patterns of thought and memory, are being conditioned in a manner in which they are becoming increasingly less clear to us in such a pursuit.

Lyn Lesch’s new book Toward a Holistic Intelligence: Life on the Other Side of the Digital Barrier was recently published by Rowman & Littlefield.

During the recent HBO television show The Newsroom, intrepid studio producer Jim Harper, played by John Gallagher, Jr., has an intense conversation with his girlfriend Hallie Shea, played by Grace Gummer, who has just taken a job at a news network which is requiring her to write stories concerning her life as a single woman in New York City and then post them on their site as significant news stories. After Harper admonishes her for caving into the more superficial reality TV culture that is rapidly becoming increasingly relevant, she tells him that his problem is that he’s afraid of the new Internet technology; his response being that it’s not the new technology, rather it’s the superficiality of social media.

In point of fact, as one who is critical of the increasingly superficial, shallow culture that social media has spawned, one tends to hear this argument a lot; that people who make a point of condemning social media for spawning a more superficial, dishonest culture are really just afraid of the growth of digital technology, and how we are being left behind because of it. No doubt, those of us who are alarmed by the possibility of Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse causing people to accept a shallower reality, the veracity of which can’t be trusted, will hear this same argument made with us over and over; that we’re really just afraid of a technology that we don’t understand how to properly use.

The late Neil Postman, author of such great books as The Disappearance of Childhood and The End of Education often spoke of two relevant questions which need to be asked whenever any new form of technology comes into existence: What present problem does it solve, and what new problems does it create? That is, in terms of the Metaverse, does this new technology in which people are able to inhabit a different or alternative reality really solve any of our pressing problems, or does it simply cause us to become shallower inwardly as we experience the real world less and less without really solving any pressing problems related to humans communicating with each other?

Likewise, does a kindle e-reader solve any problems related to human literacy at the same time that it potentially causes those to use it to connect in shallower fashion with what they are reading when they don’t have the advantage of a direct physical connection with it, as they do whenever they hold a book in their hand? Or does the new Apple watch facilitate faster, easier connection with others when everyone who could afford the watch can also easily afford an iPhone, while at the same time, it might easily cause Internet addiction to become more prevalent simply because it is something that is literally on someone’s arm?

Obviously, new technologies appear all the time that everyone must get used to because that is simply the new world in which they live. Examples being things like the electric light, the automobile, or even the personal computer. However, these are also things which made everyone’s lives substantially easier, even if they did create a newer set of problems. However, if things like the Metaverse, the e-reader, or the Apple watch come into existence without solving any pressing problems, and even though at the at the time of their appearance they seem cool or trendy, they present a new set of problems related to potentially shallower inner lives and shortened attention spans, then it seems one has to indeed ask if they are worth the trade-off.

When Jim Harper told Hallie Shea during their breakup on the Newsroom that “It’s not the technology” what he meant was that she was conflating the issue of people not being adept at using certain Internet-related devices with their concern with an increasingly shallower culture that those same devices may be helping to foster. Unfortunately, by conflating the two, the second issue, the more important of the two, might never be discussed or properly addressed. Let’s hope that this doesn’t continue to occur.

Lyn Lesch’s new book Toward a Holistic Intelligence: Life on the Other Side of the Digital Barrier, published by Rowman & Littlefield, is now available from booksellers.