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'''CRITICAL WILBER CONCEPT:'''  Here’s one way to consider reintegration between RH and LH:  in the previous example of monitoring subjects’ brains with electrodes during prayer, Wilber would say there is reality happening in every quadrant.  He holds that mind is real, and therefore some sort of genuine growth, change, or expansion of consciousness is happening in the context of prayer.  At the same time he also asserts that the body is real and so endorphins are indeed more active during prayer, and are possibly even the sole cause of our devout feelings of inner peace.  It’s simply built into reality that everything is a two sided coin (actually a four-sided coin!) and therefore it doesn’t really matter if scientists find dopamine or even pink elephants in the brain; neither constitutes evidence that consciousness isn’t real* or isn’t growing in the context of prayer.  Dopamine, serotonin, or other brain chemicals do not negate spiritual growth.  However, if we remain unaware (or in denial) of the reality of both RH & LH sides of our experience,  then we are forced to choose in a false dualism.  One choice is to hold the infantile prerational and prescientific view that our prayer caused our inner religious experience (sometimes leveraged into a proof that God exists).  The other choice is to accept the modern critical (RH) view that we live in a colorless, flat, and demystified world in which we are just a collection of neuron-charged chemicals that generate an illusion of free will (sometimes leveraged into a proof that God does not exist).  Wilber, by contrast, would maintain that Spirit is the ground of all being, and that includes brain chemicals as well as consciousness.  We could say that the inner experience and the corresponding body processes taken together constitute a “spirit-event.”

'''CRITICAL WILBER CONCEPT:'''  Here’s one way to consider reintegration between RH and LH:  in the previous example of monitoring subjects’ brains with electrodes during prayer, Wilber would say there is reality happening in every quadrant.  He holds that mind is real, and therefore some sort of genuine growth, change, or expansion of consciousness is happening in the context of prayer.  At the same time he also asserts that the body is real and so endorphins are indeed more active during prayer, and are possibly even the sole cause of our devout feelings of inner peace.  It’s simply built into reality that everything is a two sided coin (actually a four-sided coin!) and therefore it doesn’t really matter if scientists find dopamine or even pink elephants in the brain; neither constitutes evidence that consciousness isn’t real* or isn’t growing in the context of prayer.  Dopamine, serotonin, or other brain chemicals do not negate spiritual growth.  However, if we remain unaware (or in denial) of the reality of both RH & LH sides of our experience,  then we are forced to choose in a false dualism.  One choice is to hold the infantile prerational and prescientific view that our prayer caused our inner religious experience (sometimes leveraged into a proof that God exists).  The other choice is to accept the modern critical (RH) view that we live in a colorless, flat, and demystified world in which we are just a collection of neuron-charged chemicals that generate an illusion of free will (sometimes leveraged into a proof that God does not exist).  Wilber, by contrast, would maintain that Spirit is the ground of all being, and that includes brain chemicals as well as consciousness.  We could say that the inner experience and the corresponding body processes taken together constitute a “spirit-event.”

*[You may ask, what critic would suggest consciousness is not real?  I refer you to Edward Wilson, a Harvard biologist who argues that everything can be explained in terms of its smallest components.  Wilson says consciousness is simply the particle physics that ultimately underlie the molecules, cells, and neurons of the brain.  Consciousness is essentially a quantum field following natural laws, therefore it has no free will, it just generates the illusion of one.  Wilson claims we don’t know enough yet to explain the physics, but soon we will.  This begs the question…..who is this “we” that will soon understand how the illusion of consciousness is generated?  A quantum field that learns how to comprehend itself….isn’t that called….self-transcendence?!  It‘s hard to see how that‘s not the same thing as “real” consciousness.  We‘re obviously in the realm of semantics here. Click [[this link]] for more on consciousness and physics].

*[You may ask, what critic would suggest consciousness is not real?  I refer you to Edward Wilson, a Harvard biologist who argues that everything can be explained in terms of its smallest components.  Wilson says consciousness is simply the particle physics that ultimately underlie the molecules, cells, and neurons of the brain.  Consciousness is essentially a quantum field following natural laws, therefore it has no free will, it just generates the illusion of one.  Wilson claims we don’t know enough yet to explain the physics, but soon we will.  This begs the question…..who is this “we” that will soon understand how the illusion of consciousness is generated?  A quantum field that learns how to comprehend itself….isn’t that called….self-transcendence?!  It‘s hard to see how that‘s not the same thing as “real” consciousness.  We‘re obviously in the realm of semantics here. Click [http://nordan.daynal.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Origins_Of_Religion_in_Universal_Consciousness this link] for more on consciousness and physics].