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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

Is This Just Existentialist Resistance to Spirituality?

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

The Last Objection

There is one objection to the preceding critique of Wilber's Atman project that deserves more attention than a simple dismissal. Perhaps the whole argument against spiritual immortality is itself a psychological defense. Perhaps we reject Atman because we cannot bear the possibility that it might be true.

After all, isn't the existentialist position itself motivated by fear? Isn't it easier to say that death is final than to contemplate the possibility that consciousness has a deeper, timeless dimension? Perhaps the insistence on biological finitude is not intellectual courage at all, but existential resignation disguised as scientific sobriety.

This is a serious objection because it exposes a genuine danger. Skepticism can become a worldview just as spirituality can. The person who says, "There is no God, no soul, no afterlife, no transcendence, and consciousness ends with the brain" may sometimes be making claims that go beyond what the evidence warrants. The absence of evidence for something is not necessarily evidence of its impossibility.

But there is a crucial distinction that prevents this objection from becoming a trump card. A psychological explanation of why somebody believes something does not tell us whether that belief is true. The spiritualist may fear death. The atheist may fear self-deception. The mystic may fear meaninglessness. The scientist may fear being wrong. Human beings are psychologically complicated creatures. None of these motivations settles the metaphysical question.

The question remains stubbornly simple: What is the evidence?

The Mirror Image of the Atman Project

This is where the Atman project begins to look rather different when viewed from the outside.

Wilber starts with a genuine human phenomenon: people are dissatisfied with finite existence. We want permanence. We want love to last. We want our projects to survive us. We don't want consciousness simply to disappear. We sometimes experience states in which the ordinary ego seems to dissolve and time itself appears to lose its grip.

Wilber then gives these phenomena a profound interpretation. Beneath the finite personality lies an infinite Self. The individual ego is a contracted expression of something timeless. Its restless search for fulfillment is therefore ultimately a distorted search for Atman.

This is an attractive theory because it unifies an enormous number of human experiences. But it also creates a methodological problem. The very experiences that are being explained are recruited as evidence for the explanation.

We fear death because we are really immortal.

How do we know we are really immortal?

Because we cannot accept death and continually reach beyond finite existence.

Why do we reach beyond finite existence?

Because we are really immortal.

The circle is difficult to escape.

The naturalistic alternative is much less glamorous. Perhaps organisms simply resist their own destruction because organisms that failed to do so tended not to persist. Perhaps human beings inherited powerful survival mechanisms and then acquired the extraordinary cognitive ability to represent their own future death. Perhaps the human imagination then elaborated this predicament into religion, philosophy, art, mythology and metaphysics.

That explanation does not prove that Atman is false. But it demonstrates that Atman is not required to explain the basic phenomenon.

The Existentialist May Be Resisting Something—But What?

Suppose the existentialist says: "There is no immortal Self."

We can ask why.

If the answer is, "Because I don't want there to be one," that is psychologically interesting but logically irrelevant.

Suppose, however, the answer is: "I have examined the evidence and I don't find sufficient grounds for believing in one."

Now we have an epistemological position rather than a psychological confession.

The distinction is fundamental.

A person can desperately want God to exist and still have insufficient evidence for God. Another person can desperately want God not to exist and still be wrong. Desire cuts in both directions.

This is why accusing skepticism of "resistance" does not establish the spiritual alternative. At most, it reminds us to examine our own motives.

And that is something the spiritualist should be willing to do as well.

Why are humans so attracted to immortality?

Why does the promise of an eternal Self feel so satisfying?

Why do spiritual traditions repeatedly reinterpret death as transition, transformation or return?

Why does the idea that consciousness is fundamental have such extraordinary emotional appeal?

Perhaps because human beings have difficulty imagining their own nonexistence.

If that is true, then the psychology of spiritual belief requires at least as much scrutiny as the psychology of disbelief.

Existentialism as a Discipline of Restraint

The most interesting existentialist response to mortality is therefore not the assertion that life is meaningless. It is the refusal to manufacture certainty where none is available.

This is what makes the existentialist tradition relevant to the Atman question.

Kierkegaard confronted the individual with anxiety, despair and the problem of faith. Nietzsche rejected the consolations of traditional metaphysics and challenged human beings to create values rather than simply inherit them. Heidegger placed mortality at the center of his analysis of human existence. Sartre rejected a predetermined essence and emphasized human responsibility. Camus confronted the apparent absurdity of demanding meaning from an indifferent universe.

These thinkers disagreed profoundly with one another. But they shared a willingness to take finitude seriously.

Death was not necessarily something to be explained away.

It could instead be something that transforms the meaning of existence precisely because it cannot be escaped.

That is an important alternative to the Atman project.

Perhaps mortality is not evidence that we have forgotten our immortality.

Perhaps mortality is one of the conditions that makes human existence what it is.

The Temptation of Metaphysical Consolation

The problem with immortality theories is therefore not that they are comforting. Comfort is not evidence against a proposition. A comforting proposition can be true.

The problem arises when psychological comfort is mistaken for epistemological confirmation.

There is a familiar sequence:

I cannot imagine ceasing to exist.

Therefore I must continue to exist.

I experience consciousness as strangely immediate and undeniable.

Therefore consciousness must exist independently of the body.

I experience timelessness in meditation.

Therefore consciousness is literally timeless.

I experience unity with everything.

Therefore everything is literally one consciousness.

Evolution produces increasing complexity.

Therefore evolution must be moving toward consciousness.

The universe permits conscious beings to arise.

Therefore consciousness must have been its purpose.

Each transition looks plausible when presented poetically. None follows logically from the previous statement.

The danger is not spirituality itself. It is the transformation of evocative experience into ontological certainty.

Mystery Is Not a Metaphysical Blank Check

There is an important point here for anyone sympathetic to spirituality.

Rejecting an unsupported explanation does not mean rejecting mystery.

We do not know exactly what consciousness ultimately is. We do not know whether our present scientific frameworks will eventually provide a complete explanation of subjective experience. We do not know whether reality has dimensions that current physics cannot describe.

But "we don't know" is not an intellectual failure.

It is sometimes the most accurate statement available.

The mistake is to reason:

Consciousness is mysterious.

Therefore consciousness is Atman.

Or:

Quantum mechanics is mysterious.

Therefore consciousness is nonlocal.

Or:

Evolution is not completely understood.

Therefore evolution contains a cosmic drive toward Spirit.

This is simply a more sophisticated version of the old God-of-the-gaps argument.

The gap may now be called Spirit, Eros, nonduality, primordial consciousness or quantum interconnectedness. But the logical structure remains the same.

A mystery has been discovered.

A preferred metaphysics is inserted into the mystery.

The mystery is then cited as evidence for the metaphysics.

The Strange Status of "Timelessness"

This becomes particularly problematic with Wilber's use of timelessness.

There is no doubt that people can report experiences in which ordinary temporal awareness becomes attenuated or disappears. Such experiences can be profound. They may radically alter someone's understanding of self and reality.

But we must distinguish between experiencing timelessness and existing timelessly.

This distinction is easy to overlook because language encourages us to slide between them.

"I experienced no sense of time" is a report about consciousness.

"I entered timeless awareness" is already an interpretation.

"My true Self is timeless" is a metaphysical claim.

"I am therefore immortal" is an even stronger metaphysical claim.

The first statement may be directly grounded in experience. Each subsequent statement adds another layer of interpretation.

There is nothing wrong with making those interpretations. The problem begins when the layers are presented as though they were contained in the original experience.

They are not.

The Witness Problem

The same applies to Wilber's notion of the Witness.

There is something undeniably interesting about the fact that we can observe our own thoughts. We can notice sensations, emotions, memories and mental images. Through meditation, this metacognitive capacity can become extraordinarily refined.

But from the fact that thoughts can be observed, it does not follow that there is an eternal observer standing outside the changing system.

We can describe the visual system as processing visual information without postulating a little observer inside the brain watching the images.

Likewise, metacognition gives us awareness of our own mental processes without automatically establishing an ontologically separate Witness.

The temptation is to turn a function of consciousness into an entity.

The Witness becomes a thing.

Then the thing becomes eternal.

Then the eternal thing becomes Atman.

And finally Atman becomes the metaphysical ground of the entire universe.

At every stage, something new has been added.

The original observation never carried all of those conclusions by itself.

The Brain Does Not Disprove Spirit—But It Changes the Burden

None of this means neuroscience has disproved every conceivable form of spiritual reality.

That would be an equally unwarranted claim.

But neuroscience has established an extraordinarily strong dependence of ordinary consciousness upon brain function. Alter the brain and perception, memory, personality, attention, emotion and self-awareness can change. Severe disturbances of brain function can profoundly disrupt consciousness.

This matters because any theory of an immortal personal self must explain why the self we actually experience is so deeply dependent upon the biological machinery of the brain.

Saying that the brain is merely a "vehicle" or "instrument" of consciousness does not solve the problem. It merely moves it.

How does the instrument interact with the supposed nonphysical Self?

How are memories encoded?

How does Atman know what the brain is experiencing?

Why does damage to a particular neural system alter a person's personality?

Why does anesthesia eliminate or radically transform conscious experience?

If the eternal Self remains fully intact throughout all this, what exactly is its relationship to the person whose consciousness is being altered?

These are not objections to spirituality in general. They are demands for explanatory clarity.

The Personal Self Is the Hardest Part to Save

The problem becomes even sharper when we stop talking about abstract consciousness and start talking about you.

Suppose an eternal consciousness survives your death.

Does your childhood survive?

Does your memory survive?

Does your personality survive?

Does your sense of humor survive?

Does your relationship with particular people survive?

Does your knowledge survive?

Does your autobiographical identity survive?

If the answer is no, then something eternal may survive, but it is difficult to identify that something with the person who is currently reading these words.

If the answer is yes, then we need an account of how this personal information is preserved independently of the brain.

The distinction between universal consciousness and personal identity therefore cannot simply be brushed aside.

Even if one established that consciousness is somehow fundamental, one would still have to explain why this particular stream of consciousness continues after the death of this particular organism.

"Consciousness is eternal" and "Frank is immortal" are not equivalent propositions.

That logical gap is enormous.

Reincarnation Has the Same Problem

Reincarnation illustrates this perfectly.

Suppose one person dies and another is born.

If the second person has no memories, personality traits or psychological continuity connecting them to the first, in what sense are they the same person?

One can answer that the same Atman occupies both lives.

But then Atman is doing all the identity work while personal continuity disappears.

If the Atman is universal and identical in everyone, then the claim "I will be reincarnated" begins to lose its ordinary meaning.

Who exactly is being reincarnated?

The individual personality?

The memories?

The soul?

The Witness?

Universal consciousness?

These are not interchangeable concepts.

The more carefully we examine them, the less obvious the supposed continuity becomes.

The Quantum Escape Route

Modern spirituality has found another way around the problem: quantum mechanics.

Perhaps consciousness is nonlocal.

Perhaps quantum entanglement allows minds to transcend space and time.

Perhaps the observer creates reality.

Perhaps quantum information cannot really be destroyed.

Perhaps consciousness therefore survives death.

This is a seductive chain of associations.

But it is not a scientific argument.

Quantum nonlocality is a precisely defined physical phenomenon concerning correlations between quantum systems. It does not mean that human consciousness is spatially unlimited. Quantum entanglement does not provide evidence that personal identity survives biological death.

Likewise, "information is conserved" does not mean that a person's first-person perspective is preserved.

Physics can tell us extraordinary things about matter, energy, information and spacetime without thereby establishing an immortal subject.

The word "quantum" cannot function as a magic wand that turns an unsupported metaphysical possibility into a scientific conclusion.

The Existentialist Counterattack

At this point the existentialist can turn the entire Atman argument upside down.

Perhaps it is not the skeptic who is resisting spirituality.

Perhaps it is the spiritualist who is resisting existence.

Perhaps the refusal to accept death is itself the original escape.

Instead of facing the possibility that the individual really does end, we invent a deeper Self that cannot end.

Instead of accepting that meaning may have to be created within a finite life, we locate meaning in an eternal cosmic order.

Instead of accepting uncertainty about consciousness, we declare consciousness fundamental.

Instead of accepting the possibility that evolution has no ultimate destination, we imagine Eros pulling everything toward greater consciousness.

The accusation of "resistance" therefore cuts both ways.

The question is not who is resisting.

The question is what each side is resisting.

The spiritualist may be resisting finitude.

The existentialist may be resisting consolation.

Neither psychological diagnosis establishes the truth of the corresponding metaphysics.

The Great Difference Between Openness and Belief

This is where a more mature spirituality might emerge.

There is a profound difference between saying:

"There is no transcendent reality."

and saying:

"I do not know whether there is a transcendent reality, and I will not pretend to know."

The second position is not necessarily materialist, atheist or existentialist in the strong philosophical sense.

It is simply intellectually restrained.

Likewise, there is a difference between saying:

"I experienced something that felt timeless and radically nondual."

and:

"I therefore know that an eternal Atman exists."

The first statement preserves the mystery of experience.

The second closes the investigation.

Ironically, the supposedly "spiritual" position may therefore sometimes be less open than the skeptical one. It may announce the answer before the question has been adequately investigated.

Real openness means allowing the possibility that reality is stranger than our current models while also allowing the possibility that our most cherished spiritual interpretations are wrong.

Both possibilities must remain open.

What If There Really Is Something Beyond?

The skeptic should therefore concede something important.

Perhaps there is.

Perhaps consciousness has dimensions we have not yet understood.

Perhaps our present conception of death will someday be revised.

Perhaps there are aspects of reality that neither neuroscience nor physics currently captures.

Perhaps some experiences traditionally called mystical contain genuine insights that our existing conceptual frameworks cannot adequately describe.

Nothing in skepticism requires us to deny these possibilities.

But possibility is cheap.

Almost anything is possible in the logical sense.

The question is what deserves belief.

A possibility becomes a serious hypothesis when it generates evidence, makes distinctive predictions, survives attempts at falsification and gains independent support.

Until then, it remains a possibility.

That may sound disappointingly modest.

But intellectual honesty is sometimes disappointingly modest.

The Existential Achievement

This brings us back to death.

If there is no immortality, does life become meaningless?

Not necessarily.

In fact, mortality may be precisely what gives human meaning its distinctive character.

A conversation matters because it happens once.

A friendship matters because the people involved are vulnerable and finite.

A work of art matters because its creator will not be here forever.

A day matters because there will not be infinitely many of them.

Love does not become meaningless because it ends.

On the contrary, its finitude is part of what makes it precious.

This is the insight that the Atman project risks overlooking. It assumes that finite meaning is somehow defective because it does not last forever.

But why should duration determine value?

A meal does not need to last forever to be delicious.

A piece of music does not need infinite duration to be beautiful.

A sunset does not need to recur eternally to be real.

A human life does not need to be endless to be significant.

Perhaps the demand for immortality is itself the distortion.

Beyond the Atman Project

If this is right, then the real alternative to the Atman project is not nihilism.

It is radical acceptance of finitude.

We can take consciousness seriously without making it eternal.

We can take mystical experience seriously without making it infallible.

We can take spirituality seriously without turning it into metaphysics.

We can take meaning seriously without making it cosmic.

We can take death seriously without treating it as a mistake in the design of the universe.

And we can remain open to mystery without filling every gap with Spirit.

This is not necessarily an anti-spiritual position.

It may be a more disciplined spirituality.

It asks us to distinguish what we experience from what we infer, what we hope from what we know, and what is metaphysically possible from what is empirically supported.

The Final Irony

There is a final irony in all this.

Wilber's Atman project tells us that human beings are constantly mistaking finite substitutes for the Infinite.

But perhaps the greatest substitute is the theory itself.

We experience the pain of finitude and invent immortality.

We experience the mystery of consciousness and invent an eternal Witness.

We experience mystical unity and invent cosmic Oneness.

We observe evolution and invent Eros.

We encounter quantum weirdness and invent nonlocal consciousness.

At every point, an evocative experience becomes a metaphysical object.

The very process Wilber describes as humanity's tendency to substitute finite objects for the Infinite may therefore have its intellectual counterpart in the tendency to substitute metaphysical concepts for unanswered questions.

Perhaps the mature response is not to find the right substitute.

Perhaps it is to stop substituting.

The Courage to Leave the Question Open

So, is skepticism about Atman merely existentialist resistance to spirituality?

It can be, if skepticism becomes dogmatic denial.

But it need not be.

There is a position between belief and disbelief that is considerably harder to maintain: epistemic openness without metaphysical inflation.

It says:

I know that I am conscious.

I know that I am finite.

I know that I experience myself as a continuing subject.

I know that humans can experience extraordinary states of consciousness.

I know that these experiences can be profound and transformative.

I know that consciousness remains philosophically mysterious.

But I do not know that my consciousness is eternal.

I do not know that Atman exists.

I do not know that evolution has a cosmic destination.

I do not know that mystical experience reveals an objective metaphysical realm.

And I will not convert what I do not know into what I claim to know.

That is not necessarily resistance to spirituality.

It may be resistance to something more basic: the human desire to turn mystery into certainty.

Perhaps that is the real existential challenge.

Not whether we can discover that we are immortal, but whether we can live fully without that guarantee.

Not whether the universe promises us eternity, but whether we can appreciate existence without demanding such a promise.

Not whether death is secretly an illusion, but whether we can face death without needing it to be one.

And perhaps the deepest spiritual statement is therefore not:

"I am Atman. I am eternal."

Nor even:

"There is no Atman. There is nothing beyond death."

It is simply:

"I do not know."

And then, having admitted that, we return to life.