Towards a comparative study of the concept of mind/consciousness in Western science, Eastern mysticism, and American Indian thought

Despite all the sophisticated knowledge garnered by Western science over the last few centuries, the answer to one question, essential to an enhanced understanding of the human being, remains unresolved: the nature of consciousness or mind. Cognitive science tells us that our minds are the result of the evolution of the brain, and our subjective experience is nothing more than complex brain function. This view is an extension of the model of reductive materialism. However, cognitive scientists have yet to explain how the behavior of neurons gives rise to our subjective mental state.Various religions have long posited the existence of soul or spirit to explain our subjective experience. Eastern mystics have studied the mind/consciousness for thousands of years. Since contact, Native Americans, across both North and South America, have claimed spiritual experiences that have largely gone uninvestigated. Social scientists have reasoned that Native people are primitive, imaginative, easily duped, or frauds. However, since these contentions are nearly universal across Native America, they deserve a closer look. If we begin with the premise that Natives are not imagining or deceiving us about these events, we arrive at the hypothesis that Native mystical events actually happen. Out of the many that immediately arise, this paper will address three significant research questions: (1) Is there something unusual about the Native American or mystic's mind/consciousness that allows these events to happen? (2) Is there information or evidence already within the body of Western thought and knowledge about mind/consciousness that will help us understand how this hypothesis could be true? (3) If spirits exist as Natives insist, they must be, or must have, a form of mind/consciousness since they act mindfully thus, what does that tell us about how the universe might operate?To address these questions, we compare the notion of mind/consciousness in cognitive sciences with that of classical Buddhism, Hinduism, and Native American thought. To flesh out the Western scientific view, we explore alternative scientific observations and studies in the areas of bio-fields, coma studies, and brain damage, all of which tend to refute the notion of mind out of brain. Going further, new interpretations of quantum mechanics from physicists David Bohm and Amit Goswami, describe a sub-quantum realm where all matter dissolves into waves of energy, and where consciousness is an irreducible element of the universe. Physicists describe this sub-quantum arena as the "Ocean of Pure Potential," a sort of primordial soup of infinite potential.An integral study by Jeffrey Schwartz, M.D., further erodes the materialist position by successfully relieving Obsessive Compulsive Disorder patients of their symptoms through volitional Buddhist "mindfulness" techniques, causing neuronal "rewiring" by mental force acting upon the brain something long believed impossible.A close comparison of the "mindful" training necessary to walk the ethical path of Buddhism as a means of gaining a spiritual life, with that of traditional Native socializing processes, yields some startling similarities. By bringing all these disparate views together in order to answer the three research questions, we discover a remarkable depiction of the nature of the human being, and the beginnings of an answer to the mystery of mind/consciousness.