by David Cycleback PhD

(Reviewed by Chris Nunn MD, Southampton University and Journal of Consciousness Studies)

INTRODUCTION

Time is one of humankind’s unanswerable mysteries. Aristotle called time “the most unknown of unknown things.” What time is and even if it objectively exists are unanswerable questions. Time is intangible.

There have been and will be countless theories about time. Many, including in science, are simply useful definitions or conventions, and each is looking at time in a particular way and for a particular purpose. Written as the introductory reading for a short course and discussion group I have conducted, this bite-size read looks at a variety of significant perspectives from physics, philosophy and psychology. A key is to demonstrate that there are many different incomplete and subjective ways of looking at what ultimately is beyond our mental grasp. Debate and additional perspectives and theories are welcome.

Humans have common, everyday ideas about time. These include that time is real and objective, time continually ticks away at an even rate and is the same for everyone everywhere, time flows linearly from the past to the present to the future, and that only the experienced present ‘now’ is real with the past and future being unreal. Most of these ideas are accepted as facts as obvious as the sky is blue and water is wet.

However, close examination brings many of these ideas into question. Cultural perceptions of time differ, physics has shown that time and space can act counter to our intuition, and biology and philosophy reveal many paradoxes about time.

There are a few ideas about time that are largely agreed up by most philosophers and scientists. Scientists and philosophers agree and define that time requires change. Time may simply be an innate abstract way for humans to understand and mark change. If there is no change there is no time. If it is only now, there is no time. It is when now becomes the past and there is a new now that there is the change that defines time.

There is general agreement amongst philosophers and scientists that time is continuous, meaning we do not experience it darting about or starting and stopping randomly. In our universe, time also appears to have an intrinsic direction from past to present to future, called the arrow of time.

Even with those agreed-upon standards, you will find some who disagree. Though his views are old-fashioned, Isaac Newton believed time didn’t require change. Some quantum physicists ponder if time is indeed continual. The arrow of time is not theoretically absolute.

1 MAJOR HISTORICAL & CULTURAL CONCEPTIONS OF TIME

The three major cultural and historical conceptions of time are linear time, circular time and timelessness. These conventions appear in theology, philosophy, science, psychology and art. 

1.1 Linear time

Linear time follows an inexorable line from the past to the future. Most people today imagine and mark time as linear, and our watches and clocks mark time by this convention. Linear time is the standard convention used in science. Abrahamic religions chose a linear conception of time because it allows for the creation of the universe and a final judgment.

1.2 Cyclical time

Many early cultures had a cyclical conception of time, sometimes called the wheel of time. These cultures include Incan, Mayan, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. They perceived time as consisting of repeating ages and time periods. This helps explain the idea of reincarnation. Circular or repeating conceptions of time are still used today by some cultures, including in India. (Das 2018) (Coward 2011)

The observance of repeating seasons is an example of circular time. Early agricultural and other societies were centered around the seasons, the regular apparent rising and falling of the sun, and the regular changing of star formations. 

1.3 Timelessness 

A timeless view of time was common to many early peoples and mystical cultures such as some American Indians tribes, Australian aboriginals and Jewish Kabbalists. In this view of time, the past and present are intimately connected. History and spirits of the dead exist in the present. (Falk 2016) (Nichols 2014) (Blount 2017)

This is a mystical way of thinking, with the brain processing sensory information in a particular way. The modern brain has evolved to create cognitive constructs to define time, space and labels, including a linear perception of time. These constructs are essential to function but are artificial. With early peoples and mystical cultures, these cognitive constructs either are undeveloped or suppressed, and the sensory information is processed in different ways. A commonly described experience of mystical experiences is that everything is one and time stops or slows. (Choi 2016) (Barrett and Griffith 2019) (Yanakieve et al 2018)

1.4 Today We Look at Time in Different Ways

While a linear conception of time is standard today, we also look at time in the other two ways. Modern calendars mark time both linearly (day 1, day 2, day 3, and year 2019, 2020, 2021) and cyclically (seasons, annual holidays). Our following of the “rising and falling of the sun” and regular changes in star constellations and moon phases is cyclical. 

A Hindu in India who religiously conceives of the historical and future ages as cyclical may also mark time in his daily life linearly with a watch or clock. 

As mystical experiences and related neurological events are not uncommon, a human who observes linear and/or cyclical time may at times additionally perceive time as timeless. Many people on a level have an idea of the past, such as past loved ones or events, psychologically existing in the present. 

1.5 Two Other Ways of Looking at Time: Presentism and Eternalism

Presentism is the view that only the present (what is in front of you now) is real, and the past is unreal and the unknown future is unreal. This is the common way most people perceive time. 

Eternalism is the view that the past, present and future are all equally real, and that our perception of only the experienced “now” being real is merely a matter of our brain’s consciousness and our arbitrary place in time. 

To us, our present is perceived as real. However, to someone in 1755 or 1995, their present was perceived as just as real. It is just a matter of our arbitrary place in time that we consider our “current’ as the real. In the big picture eternalism view, there is no reason to say that one present over another has privileged status. You can compare it to space or geography where, when standing in Chicago, you know that Los Angeles and Paris are as real as Chicago. You don’t say Los Angeles and Paris aren’t real because you aren’t there. With eternalism, all points of time along a timeline can be considered similarly. 

Presentism and eternalism are not in conflict. They are different perspectives of the same timeline. Presentism is the up close and personal experience of time, while eternalism is a look at time from afar. It’s akin to driving along a road versus looking at the road on a map.

This section begs the question of what other possible conceptions and combinations of conceptions of time there can be. Theoretical non-humans may have very different conceptions of time. If time itself is merely a human construct, perhaps such non-humans would have no concept of time. 

2 PHYSICS THEORIES OF TIME

Physics has offered competing mathematical theories about physical nature. Some are concerned specifically with time, while others use time as an ancillary element to the models. This section looks at the following standard physics theories: Absolute time, relativity, quantum physics, and entropy. 

2.1 Absolute time

According to its most famous proponent Isaac Newton, absolute time, or Newtonian time, exists independently of any perceiver, space and even the universe. It progresses at the same consistent pace for everyone and everything throughout the universe. This aligns most people’s everyday notion and experience of time. 

2.2 Relativity

Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity upheaved the age-old perception of time as absolute, showing that time is dynamic. The following are key aspects of his theories.

1. Space and time are intermingled and inseparable, and Einstein called it spacetime. 

2. All movement is relative. Even though we often feel as if and even claim we are standing still, everything is moving and at varying rates.

For example, say someone in a train throws forward a ball inside the train. To him, it seems that the ball is moving at, say, 10 kilometers per hour. Yet, to the observer standing on the ground beside the train, the ball appears to be moving at the speed of the train plus the speed of the ball. However, while the observer on the ground may perceive that he is standing, he also is moving. The earth he is standing on is rotating and circling the sun, the sun is moving and the galaxy is moving.

3. The faster an object moves, the slower its time. If a person leaves the earth on a spaceship going close to the speed of light and comes back in a day, she will be a day older but the people on earth will be many years older. This change in personal time is only significant when nearing the speed of light. The differences humans experience, even on an airplane, are negligible. 

4. Like a ball on a sheet, a massive object warps or curves the geometry of the surrounding spacetime. This warping is what we experience as gravity, and the more massive an object the more it warps spacetime. Time is slower the further it is in the well of the spacetime curve. Experiments using clocks on airplanes proved this gravitational time dilates to be accurate. (Jamaludin 2021) (Kennell 2015)

2.3 Quantum Physics

The word quantum (plural: quanta) refers to the smallest amount of something that you can have. Quantum physics is the branch of physics relating to the very small: The atomic and subatomic levels. Things at the quantum level work differently than at the macro level we experience in our daily lives. Newton’s classical laws do not apply at the atomic and subatomic level, and quantum physics defies common sense and normal human intuition. 

In Newtonian physics and in Einstein’s relativity, an object exists in a specific place at a specific time. However, in quantum physics, a subatomic particle exists in a cloud of probable places and states. When you take a measurement from a particular perspective the particle will be in one spot, when you take in another it will be another spot. If you take enough measurements it will be in all the possibilities of the probability cloud. 

In quantum physics and counter to human intuition and logic, particles act both as particles and waves. They act like a wave before they are measured, then like particles when observed. 

Another oddity is that subatomic particles change position and speed instantaneously. A subatomic particle goes from point a to point b, or speed c to speed d, instantaneously with no in between states or positions. This is the equivalent of a car going from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour, or from the house driveway to the store, instantaneously.

This may all sound bizarre. However, quantum physics has been one of the most reliable physics theories for predicting phenomena.

2.3.1 Time in quantum physics

Quantum physics theories and models treat time as continuous and linear. This does not constitute a prediction that time in reality is continuous. Rather it is the convention used for the model.

Some physicists ponder that time may be able to be quantized. However, this is speculation and has not been shown to be true.

2.4 Entropy and the Arrow of Time 

Most of physic’s deep laws and equations do not require a time direction. On paper, the equations can go both directions. This is a reason why some say that backward time travel is theoretically possible. However, if we look at the world we live in, time appears to flow in one direction: from the past to the present to future. This flow is called the arrow of time. 

So where does this arrow of time come from? The answer is entropy or the second law of thermodynamics.

The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy, a measure of disorder in the universe, increases in any closed system. The things in the universe move from order (or low entropy) to disorder (high entropy). If you pour milk into coffee, the milk spreads throughout the coffee. If you light a fire, the smoke spreads throughout the air. It never goes the other way. The smell of coffee or smoke spreads throughout the room and home, never the reverse. A vase falls to the cement and breaks into many pieces, and never the reverse. People, other animals and plants getting old, decaying and dying are examples of entropy. No one grows old to young.

The Big Bang and subsequent expansion of the universe is an example of entropy. The universe started as an infinitesimally small dot 13.8 billion years ago, and has been expanding since. The universe and things in it are expanding towards eventual perfect equilibrium where everything, including atoms, will be equally spread out. With this equilibrium, there will be no movement and, thus, there will be no time. Until then, change from order to disorder is the basis for our time and for the arrow of time. 

2.4.1 Resolving the Seeming Contradiction of the Symmetry Of Physical Laws Versus that Time Goes in Only One Direction

As noted, the physics equations are symmetrical and have no direction of time, yet time in our universe moves in only one direction. This seems to be a conflict. The great mathematician Kurt Godel had troubles with the symmetry of physics’s laws, because this didn’t match up with the common sense that you can’t go back in time. He concluded that science’s definition of time was “unreal.” 

However, there isn’t a contradiction. The physics equations are in general for all situations, but we live in a particular universe in a particular state. If we were living in another universe of perfect equilibrium there would be no time. There could be a universe or our future universe that is contracting, or moving from high entropy to low entropy. This would mean that time would be moving in the opposite direction. Physicist Julian Barbour suggests that on the other side of the Big Bang there could be the universe that expands and time flows in the opposite direction. (Caroll 2013) (Barbour 2021) 

2.5 Scientific Theories are Functional Tools Not Direct Representations of Reality  

Science’s mathematical models and theories are functional tools used to make predictions about physical phenomena. They are not direct or whole representations of reality. Statistician George E.P. Box famously said, “All models are false, but some are useful.” (Box in Barroso 2015) (Brennan 2018)

Instrumentalism is a scientific principle that focuses on the utility of scientific models and theories. It views theories and models as black boxes, with only their input and output being relevant. The theories and models themselves are not reality. (De Neufville 2015)

For example, quantum physics’s mathematical models that describe subatomic particles as waves and particles don’t mean the particles are waves and particles. They are mathematical models. Quantum physics theories have holes and mysteries. They are not fully understood and there are competing interpretations of what is going on. While making reliable predictions, quantum physics may simply be too abstract for human brains. (Information Processor 2018)

Further, some physics theories that are known to be incomplete are still used because they are, at least in areas and levels, good at predicting. Though the theories are known to be incomplete and sometimes incorrect, today’s physicists still use some of Newton’s laws in certain situations because they are good at predicting phenomena in those situations. The same with some of Einstein’s theories. (Deep Breadth 2018)

The definitions of time used in physics– Newtonian, relativity, quantum mechanics theories– are not representations of what time really is. I believe that if you asked Einstein or quantum physicist Richard Feynman what really is time they would say they did not know.

Conventions play important roles in science. The physicist, mathematician and philosopher Henri Poincaré said time is not an objective thing to be discovered. He said it is something humans invented for their convenience. In the end, our definitions of time are just that: conventions and definitions. (Oxford Reference 2013) (Muzi 2015)

3 PSYCHOLOGY AND TIME

Human psychology is inseparable from all human perceptions and definitions of time, including in science. Humans can only look at things from the human perspective, and this makes our thinking about anything inherently myopic and subjective. Even our philosophizing about time in this essay is done through the human lens. 

Personal psychological time is the way time is perceived by the individual brain. This perception is unique to the individual, and the perception of time can change for various reasons. Psychologically, time seems to slow or speed up based on many things: if one is asleep or awake, bored or excited, young or old. Drugs, medical conditions, mental disorders and events alter our perception of time. 

There also is psychological time particular to the human species. In order to function and survive as a species, the human brain has evolved to mentally process in a particular way the limited sensory information it receives. The visual and auditory perceptions in our mind are not direct representations of the physical world, but mental translations of sensory information. Visual and auditory illusions demonstrate the existence of margins or errors and misperceptions in our perceptions. Such illusions demonstrate that physical reality and our perception of physical reality are different. 

Our intelligence and ability to function require a concept of time and space. Catching a ball and reaching for a doorknob require a concept of space and time. Identifying an approaching animal as a dog requires knowledge from the past. Our consciousness, or self-awareness of ourselves and our environment, requires a concept of the past and future. Though humans may be unique in consciously conceptualizing time, our and other animal brains have automatic unconscious concepts of time and change. Though seemingly real, the flow of time we perceive may merely be an evolutionary neurological way the brain uses to make sense of sensory information.

While Isaac Newton believed that time was an objective thing independent of humans and even space, Newton’s contemporary, Gottfried Leibniz, believed that time does not refer to any actual existing dimension. He felt that time is a convenient intellectual concept that enables us to sequence and compare events. Similarly, philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that our conceptions of space and time are not substances in and of themselves but artificial cognitive constructs needed to make sense of or sensory information. (Arntzenius 2017) (Kant 1781)

Psychologist and philosopher Williams James said that our automatic, unconscious experience of the present always has an element of earlier and later, and that any perception that includes earlier and later is not a purely instantaneous perception of time. Our perceptions of everything involves a concept of change, which inherently involves an awareness of the past and future. Humans are innately storytellers and perceive everything as part of an ongoing narrative in time and space. (Anderson 2011)

Though not fully understood, the brain uses internal neurological and cognitive methods to process sensory information to make perceptions of time, space and identities. The brain has internal clocks and uses a process called integration to make time appear fluid. As with our visual perception, our perception of time is based on expectations and preconceptions. People under hypnosis can judge time more accurately than when they are awake, demonstrating the artifice and processing in our conscious perception of time. (Dawson and Sleek 2018) (Nilsen R 2017)

Further, it takes a short delay for our brains to process the sensory information to make a perception of “now.” Our perception of the present is of the past. (Eagleman 2019) 

As with visual and auditory illusions, there are cases of misperception of time, including misidentifying the order of events. For example, Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman has demonstrated that under certain circumstances a person can misperceive a later event happening before an earlier event. (Eagleman, 2019) (Dawson and Sleek 2018) (Davis 2019)

3.1 Is Time an Illusion?

Humans perceive that time is past, present and future. However, close examination demonstrates problems in this perception. Philosophers Aristotle and J.M.E. McTaggart said that that time as conceived and defined by humans is unreal and an illusion. McTaggart believed that all human conceptions of the universe are artificial and illusions. (Jain 2019) (McTaggart 1927)

Aristotle said that time is made up of the no longer (the past) and the not yet (the future). He said these are unreal in the present. Yet the present, the thing that separates the unreal past and the unreal future, is infinitesimally small to the point of being nothing. If the past is unreal, the future is unreal and the present does not exist, this would point to time, or at least our conception of time, being unreal and an illusion. 

4 TIME TRAVEL

We all travel through time. However, most people consider time travel as traveling significantly abnormally: at a different rate, skipping through time or in an unusual direction. 

Some perceive of different biological ways of traveling. Keeping fit and healthy and modern medicine prolong life spans, giving people the ability to live further into the future. Some imagine such things as cryogenics as a way to bring people back to life in the future. Movements such as transhumanism and posthumanism involve many theories of medically and scientifically extending and changing human life. (McKie 2018)

Whether because of drug use, mental disorder, physical situation or neurological experience, people psychologically experience time radically differently. Learning about the past and having new insight into one’s future involve a sort of mental time travel or expanded conscious awareness.

4.1 Physics Views on Time Travel

Physics offers possible and real examples of time travel, though none realistically apply to human beings. The Fermi Paradox suggests that if time travel happens, we would have encountered people or things from the future. (Shalheveth and Madar 2017)

Time dilation in the theories of relativity shows how time changes when things speed up and are near massive objects. Einstein said that something that moves faster than the speed of light goes backwards in time. Black holes are areas of extreme gravity that suck time and space. Wormholes are speculative structures in space that link disparate points in spacetime and that would theoretically allow time travel, including backward time travel. (Stein 2021) (Moscowitz 2012) (Osbourne 2017)

Changes in the direction and/or rate of entropy would change time. This may happen in the future in our universe.

Quantum physics offers theoretical examples of time travel being possible, and some speculate that time itself may be quantized. (Fernandez 2019)

Some particles move at the speed of light and black holes exist, meaning time is different and changing for some things in the universe. However, none of this time traveling seems plausible or even possible anywhere in the near future for humans. A human wouldn’t survive a black hole or wormhole, and the possibility of a human traveling at the speed of light, much less faster, is improbable. 

4.2 Philosophical Paradoxes

There are many philosophical problems with time travel, some pointing to backward time travel being impossible. (Shalheveth and Madar 2017)

Entropy goes in only one direction in our universe. Backward causation, or a future or present event causing a past event, seems logically impossible. (Yami 2007) (Uyeno 2019)

There is a famous Grandfather time travel Grandfather where you are supposed to go back in time to assassinate your grandfather. Logically, you can’t do this. If you killed your grandfather you would never be born to go back and kill your grandfather. Philosophers say this reasoning applies to all causal events. (Uyeno 2019)

 

5 FINAL NOTES

There are countless ways to consider and think about and define time, including not covered in this essay: Biological time (NIGMS 2018); Different modern cultural perceptions (Pant 2013); Conceptions of time and time travel in literature and film; Non-human animal perceptions of time (Trinity College Dublin 2013); The history of timepieces: sundials to pendulum clocks to quartz watches to atomic clocks, the history of calendars (Andrewes 2006); Common philosophical questions such as “Is time infinite or finite?”, which is an ultimately unanswerable question, in part as infinity itself is an abstract human concept that cannot be empirically tested and may not exist in the physical world. (Ceurstemont 2017) (ESA 2001).

Even if seemingly oppositional, the different ways of considering time often aren’t in conflict, but different particular perspectives. When considering the different physics, psychological, cultural and theological conceptions, it may not always involve so much different perspectives of time but different definitions.  

We can only think about time and think about our own thinking from the human perspective. Often, when you look close enough at time, you aren’t looking at time but looking at your mind. The paradoxes and illusions of time are really paradoxes and illusions of our mental conceptions and definitions of time. And maybe that’s all time ever is: a human abstract conception and a definition. This essay has given you many details and theories about time, yet likely has gotten you no closer to answering the question of ‘What is Time?’ Such is the nature of time.

 

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by Dr. Maskil David Cycleback

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”– Picasso

“There is absolutely no reason to believe (the ability to have spiritual experiences) is any different for a dog, cat, or primate’s brain.”– neurology professor Kevin Miller MD

Mysticism and spirituality involve the brain naturally if unusually functioning in particular ways. With their brains functioning differently than that of adult humans, and young children and non-human animals literally perceiving the world differently, children and non-human animals appear to be able to, if perhaps not more able to, think in spiritual ways. 

Psychology professors Lisa Miller of Columbia University and Diana Divech of Yale have written that children are born hardwired for mystical thinking, and this type of thinking is important for their mental development.Australian child psychologist Rebecca Nye writes that “a growing body of research demonstrates that children’s spirituality is not something esoteric, nor something exclusive to precocious children. Also, it is not limited to particular religious exercises, nor something we need to turn to the early lives of saints to find out about.” (Divech 2015) (Nye 2009)

Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes and Tufts University philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett wrote that children’s brains lack the mature cognitive structuring of adults that normally suppresses mystical thinking in our daily lives. Jaynes says that it is not coincidence that traditionally many religious “seers” were children. This also indicates that the spiritual or mystical way of thinking is something they often grow out of. (Dennett 2005) (Jaynes 1976) 

Notice that in stories how often it is the child who has the transcendental experiences that the adults don’t. Peter Pan to The Exorcist to Wizard of Oz to Little Red Riding Hood. In The Shining, five year old Danny has epileptic-like seizures where “It’s like when I go to sleep, he shows me things.” In Peter Pan, Peter’s childhood experiences are forgotten as an adult. In Wizard of Oz, Dorothy has her fantastic adventure while knocked out, literally being in a different state of consciousness. 

Further, in many ways children psychologically and optically perceive the world differently than adults. The following are two particularly fascinating examples:

• Adults’ brains combine senses to make one holistic perception of the physical world. However, young children’s brains keep separate each sense, including eye-to-eye. The result is that adults can identify some physical qualities in a scene that young kids cannot, and kids can identify physical qualities that adults cannot.  (University College London 2010)
• For kids under a certain age, what they know is more important than what they see. When asked to draw a coffee cup in front of them with the handle hidden from view on the other side, an adult will draw a cup as seen without a handle. The young child, who can’t see but knows there is a handle on the cup, will draw the cup with a handle on the side.  (Oxbridge Academy 2019)

The question to ponder is which drawing is more accurate. Consider that Picasso, who trained himself over years to draw like a child, was a pioneer in cubism. His cubist paintings the three dimensional sides of a figure in two dimensions.

Non-Human Animals

While humans can never know what non-human animals’ perceive, and non-human animals’ perception involves sensory information outside of human’s sight and hearing, a number of medical scientists believe non-human animals have the capability of having spiritual and mystical experiences.

As with young children, non-human animals do not have the advanced cognitive structuring that adult’s human use, and process information using the emotional parts of their brains. Some thus believe non-human animals thus have more direct, realistic experience of their physical world

Research points to spiritual experiences coming from deep primitive areas of the human brain. These areas are shared by other animals with similar brain structures. University of Kentucky neurology professor Kevin Nelson and University of Colorado evolutionary biology professor Marc Bekoff both believe animals have spiritual experiences comparable to what humans have.  (Nelson 2012) (Beckoff 2009)

Writes Miller: “It is still reasonable to conclude that since the most primitive areas of our brain happen to be spiritual, then we can expect that animals are also capable of spiritual experiences . . . In humans, we know that if we disrupt the (brain) region where vision, sense of motion, orientation in the Earth’s gravitational field, and knowing the position of our body all come together, then out-of-body experiences can be caused literally by the flip of a switch. There is absolutely no reason to believe it is any different for a dog, cat, or primate’s brain.”  (Nelson 2012)

References:

Bekoff M. (2009), “Do Animals Have Spiritual Experiences? Yes, They Do.”, psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/200911/do-animals-have-spiritual-experiences-yes-they-do

Dennett D (2005), “2005 : WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?”, stage.edge.org/response-detail/11902

Divecha D (2015), “How Does Spirituality Grow in Children?”, greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_does_spirituality_grow_in_children 

Jaynes J (1976), The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” Houghton Mifflin

Neson, K (2012), The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain: A Neurologist’s Search for the God Experience Reprint Edition (Plume)

Nye R (2009), Children Spirituality (Church House Publishing)

Oxbridge Academy (2019), “How Children See the World Differently to Adults”. https://www.oxbridgeacademy.edu.za/blog/how-children-see-the-world-differently-to-adults/

University College London. “Children and adults see the world differently, research finds.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 September 2010. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100913153630.htm>

by Dr. Maskil David Cycleback

“Associations between mysticism and madness have been made since earliest recorded history, and the striking resemblance between self-reports of both mystical and psychotic experience suggests that similar psychological processes may be involved in their occurrence. “– Nickki Crowley PhD, Assistant Professor of Biology and Biobehavioral Health, Penn State University (Crowley 2018)

The similarity between religious visions and hallucinations and delusions of people with mental illness has long been known. Numerous mental conditions can produce mystical or spiritual experiences, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and epilepsy. This focus here is on schizophrenia.   

Schizophrenia is a complex, severe disorder that is far from fully understood.  Symptoms include emotional blunting, social and socializing problems, difficulty “reading” people,  cognitive problems and deterioration, disorganized speech and behavior, language problems,  problems with working memory and self awareness, a disconnect with standard perceptions of reality, and visual and auditory hallucinations 

Schizophrenics often hallucinate commanding voices, voices that instruct them what to do. The voices are as sensorily real to them as when someone talks to you, and commanding voices are much like religious voices. (webmd 2020)

Schizophrenia involves certain cognitive areas of the brain that are damaged, underdeveloped or deteriorated.  These are the cognitive areas that organize information and make our perceptions of time, geography, categories, identifications, and symbolic language. The perceptions are artificial but needed for normal function.  With the cognitive areas suppressed or damaged, schizophrenics process information in a more emotional, right brain way similar to what happens during mystical experiences.

In his seminal 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Houghton Mifflin), Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes theorized that most mental illnesses are just early ways of thinking. He said schizophrenia is the way early people thought.

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Jaynes said that schizophrenia is a vestige of early, pre-conscious human thinking. He said that the commanding voices schizophrenics hear were the early gods, and that early people sensorily experienced “gods” and muses in sight and sound.

The cognitive and emotional parts work together to function, and the parts of the brain receive information or messages from other parts of the brain.   Modern brains use the cognitive structuring that order, label and process the right hemisphere messages to make sense of the “messages” they receive from other parts of the brain.  Modern humans use and require these processes to have consciousness, or the ability to look at and try and understand their emotional responses and sensory information.  

With modern brains, the proverbial right hemisphere emotional brain is much less dominant than it used to be, as the proverbial left hemisphere cognitive parts of the brain has gained more influence.

As early humans lacked advanced language, metaconscousness, autobiographical memory, and the capacity of executive ego functions, such as deliberate mind-wandering, introspection, mental control and the ability to think about one’s own thoughts, they thus received messages without the cognitive, conscious analysis. Humans thus received the messages from parts of their brain as direct vocal commands, and took them as direct commends as gods.

Early people literally perceived and “heard” Gods and muses.  Their brain was “talking” to itself, but they did not have the conscious ability to know it was their own thoughts.  Consciousness is often defined as thinking about one’s thoughts and being aware that they are one’s own thoughts.

Jaynes writes that the Iliad and parts of the Old Testament were written by non-conscious people, and that you can see that later parts of the Bible and the Odyssey were written by people who were gaining consciousness. He said there were so many gods in the old days, because the gods were made by the people’s brains. 

This schizophrenic way of thinking was useful and in fact essential for social functioning and survival in early days. He said early societies were higherchial like bee colonies. This unconscious “follow commands” method of thinking and perception served well.  

However, these societies and cultures were upheaved, including by natural disasters and migration, and human thinking had to evolve.

To adapt, human brains developed the cognitive structure and advanced language needed for consciousness, to adapt and consider. The proverbial intellectual left hemisphere became more dominant. As the cognitive structures and self reflection develped, and as advanced and written language becomes more advanced, these religious visions and voices diminished or disappeared from most peoples’ and daily life.  

The peoples noticed that their gods, once part of their daily sensory lives, were disappearing or disappeared.

My god has forsaken me and disappeared, 

My goddess has failed me and keeps at a distance 

The benevolent angel who walked beside me has departed, 

My protecting spirit has taken to flight and is seeking someone else. 

— Anonymous Mesopetanian poet (700 BC)

Jaynes wrote that, as consciousness developed and the gods disappeared, humans felt that their gods had left them.  They developed religious practices and leaders in an attempt to “bring back the gods.” Religious practices such as meditation, Gregorian chants, Whirling Dervish and Sun Dances, meditation and prayer alter how the mind functions by suppressing parts of the brain. They bring us back to early thinking.

Shamanic and similar mystics were people whose brains worked in the old way, and societies used them as conduits to the gods.  Before their brains developed, children were known to be more prevalent to having religious visions.

Notice how the religious often say that bad thoughts or questioning dogma are sinful and go against God. That is the type of conscious thinking and reflecting that prevents musical experiences and “makes the gods go away.”  

Schizophrenic Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash said he got his hallucinations and delusions  to go away by thinking about them logically and consciously dismissing them as hallucinations.  

This all shows that human thinking, old and and now, are about function in particular environments.  It also shows that mental illnesses are ways of thinking useful and even essential in other, often past situations.  The future and new situations may require different ways of thinking, perhaps old or mentally ill ways..

It also shows that human consciousness is produced by and perhaps requires artificial and arbitrary cognitive ways of thinking.  Our consciousness is, and may necessarily always be, artificial, arbitrary and subjective, and, in that sense, false.

A medical school study for the Indian Journal of Psychiatry found that 99% of the schizophrenic patients in the study believed in God. (Triveni, Grover and Chakrabartincbi 2017)

Schizophrenic delusions and hallucinations commonly have religious content. However, the delusions and interpretations of hallucinations were influenced by upbringing and culture. In Egypt, the prevalence of religious delusions fluctuated to changes in how much Islam was emphasized in the country The studies reveal culture can have a powerful influence on the types of delusions and hallucinations people experience. (Aldous 2017)

Schizophrenics with no religious upbringing more commonly interpreted the voices as coming from family members or aliens, or have delusions that they are being persecuted by the government rather than the Devil.

References:

Aldous V (2017), “Religious delusions common among schizophrenics,” mailtribune.com/news/happening-now/religious-delusions-common-among-schizophrenics

Crowley N (2018) ”Psychosis or Spiritual Emergence? – Consideration of the Transpersonal Perspective within Psychiatry’ rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/members/sigs/spirituality-spsig/spirituality-special-interest-group-publications-nicki-crowley-psychosis-or-spiritual-emergence.pdf?sfvrsn=5685d4c1_2

Triveni D, Grover S, and Chakrabartincbi S (2017, “Religiosity among patients with schizophrenia: An exploratory study”.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5806320/

webmd (2020), “Schizophrenia and Your Brain”, schizophrenia/schizophrenia-and-your-brain#1

Scientists who use the same logic and scientific methods come to different conclusions, or opinions, about God and religion.  Religion and God are beyond the scope of science and reasons, and it takes different types of thinking to address, though not answers, those areas. This also shows that the world view of even scientists, logicians and mathematicians include emotional, subjective and a-rational thinking.  

The following looks at the religious views of the scientists Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman and Charles Townes.

 

Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)– Atheist

Probably the most famous scientist of his day, Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist, mathematician and cosmologist at the University of Cambridge. He is known for his theories on gravity, black holes and time.

Hawking was a hardcore atheist, rejecting the Abrahamic anthropophagic God.

He wrote: “The question is, is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science ‘God’, but it wouldn’t be a personal God that you would meet and put questions to.” Hawking was dismissive of philosophy, saying that the questions they deal in can be answered by science.

 

Isaac Newton (1642-1726/7)– Devout but unorthodox Christian

The British Newton is often ranked as the greatest scientist of all time, and a key figure in the scientific revolution and the Western enlightenment.  He developed the principles of modern physics and co-invented calculus.

Newton was devoutly and studiously Christian. However, his views were unorthodox and had to be hidden in Trinitarian society.  He was Unitarian and thought being a Trinitarian was a sin.  He believed in the plain language of the Bible, felt reason should not be used to interpret scripture, and found no mention of the Trinity.

Newton did not separate science from religion or God.  He felt that science and scientific laws were a reflection of God. While modern atheist scientists will see the scientific laws as the be-all and end-all, he saw God’s hand in all of science and happenings.

 

Richard Feynman (1918-88)– Atheist 

Richard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner known for his work in quantum mechanics. 

Feynman was an atheist, and said that the Abrahamic anthropomorphic Gods were something he could not believe.  He thought Abrahamic scriptures were interesting historically, but nothing more.

However, he said there was no inconsistency between believing in science and believing in god.  He said he disagreed with scientists who believed in God but not that they were wrong. He explained how and why he appreciated and understood how they could and did hold the two beliefs, and said that holding the two beliefs can be logically consistent and sound. 

Feynman used probability to answer all questions, including about the existence of God.  He rewrote the question“Is there (or isn’t there) God?” to ‘How sure can we be there is (or isn’t) a God?”   

“I do not believe that science can disprove the existence of  God (in the traditional Abrahamic view); I think that is impossible. And if it is impossible, is not a belief in science and in a God — an ordinary God of religion — a consistent possibility? Yes, it is consistent. Despite the fact that I said that more than half of the scientists don’t believe in God, many scientists do believe in both science and God, in a perfectly consistent way.” 

 

Charles Townes (1915-2015)– Devout Christian

Charles Townes was an American physicist, inventor of the laser and maser, and winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize for Physics.  

He was also a devout Christian, a member of the United Church of Christ. He said, “I feel the presence of God. I feel it in my own life as a spirit that is somehow with me all the time”

Townes said that science and religion were addressing different questions.  He said that science examined the physical nature of the physical world, why religion addressed the questions of metaphysical meaning. 

He also said that the religious/spiritual and scientific discoveries were much alike in many ways.  He said that each required a faith, a method of inquiry and observation, and unproven assumptions (axioms). He said his scientific ideas, including that led to the invention of the laser and maser, came to him in spiritual life epiphanies.  

Townes saw the limits and problems in science, writing.  “I don’t think that science is complete at all. We don’t understand everything, and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies. We just have to accept that we don’t understand.”

 He thought there might be a day when science and religion come together to give a full view.

 

Albert Einstein (1878-1955)– Agnostic, pantheist

The most famous scientist of the modern era, Einstein was a theoretical physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. 

Einstein believed the problem of God was the “most difficult in the world.” He said the question that could not be answered by a simple yes or no” and “the problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.”

Einstein did not believe in a personal or anthropomorphic God, considering that type of conceptio naive. He believed in a pantheistic God, writing to a Rabbi: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”

Einstein was spiritual, musical and a lover of art.

“The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. . . He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wander and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.” 

 

Sixth in a podcast series on brains, thinking and the nature and limits of knowledge by cognitive scientist and philosopher David Cycleback, this 20-minute episode looks at the theory and movement called neurodiversity. Neurodiversity seeks to reclassify mental illnesses and conditions as natural variations in thinking. There are a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints, and even controversy, including within the medical community and amongst the mentally ill. This podcast examines both neurodiversity and the different and sometimes opposing viewpoints about it.

 

To download for free David Cycleback’s peer-reviewed books in cognitive science and philosophy visit his titles published by bookboon.