Two Lines, One Question
For millennia, there have been investigations, indeed proper research into consciousness. The central starting point was not the activity of the brain, but the subjective feeling of existence. This research, which I refer to as spiritual consciousness research, has led to profound insights.
Early on, people identified the brain as the center of consciousness and, above all, of thoughts. But it was not until the 20th century that physical-biological research on the brain began to yield substantial results. This research is generally often referred to as „scientific research.“ This usually also implicitly assumes that spiritual consciousness research is unscientific, which subsequently led to a devaluation of spiritual research. For clarity, I therefore refer to this branch of research as biological consciousness research, which ultimately relies on physics.
Today, the importance of the spiritual exploration of consciousness is also recognized in so-called scientific circles, and scientific masters discuss with spiritual luminaries. Nevertheless, the central question of consciousness research remains unsolved, namely how these two „views“ on consciousness can merge into a whole. Decades ago, the philosopher David Chalmers referred to this central and unresolved question surrounding consciousness as „The Hard Problem of Consciousness.“.
What Biology Cannot Explain
There are now biological insights into why „feelings“ arose from an evolutionary perspective, which brain regions are particularly active during certain consciousness experiences, and even what influence meditation has on brain function. But there is no biological answer as to why something feels exactly the way it does, why things have properties for us that go beyond the purely physical, why we have to make decisions.
If we have to decide which of two apples we want to eat, biological research can say with very high probability which apple people will choose, and perhaps even show that this decision was made in the brain before the person became conscious of it. But if you place yourself in front of these two apples, this biological insight does not take the decision away from you. Quite the opposite, the longer we ponder the question of deciding, even if we realize that from a biological perspective there is virtually no decision, the clearer it becomes to us that we actually have to do something – we have to decide.
Thus, for our immediate concern, biological research is by no means the answer to all our problems. On the other hand, it is obvious that spiritual consciousness research has led to insights that indeed have a significant influence on our immediate concern. An excellent example of this are the findings of spiritual consciousness research within the framework of Tibetan Buddhism, which have led to techniques and practices that, even from a biological research perspective, profoundly influence our immediate concern with our consciousness: we not only „decide“ differently, but our brain works differently.
What Both Learn From Each Other
In view of this insight, the question arises as to what contribution biological research could actually have for us as „subjects of consciousness research,“ apart from the mere confirmation that, for example, changes in the brain caused by meditation are measurable. Well, here's an example that demonstrates the importance of biological research: in psychology, which for the most part belongs to spiritual consciousness research, it was long assumed that there are certain basic emotions, which would mean that the same processes would always have to occur in the brain. However, MRI scans of thousands of subjects showed that no clear „working patterns“ of the brain could be assigned to the subjects„ emotions. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldmann-Barrett then deconstructed the “spiritual research results" on basic emotions with her team and was able to show that there is no evidence for them, quite the contrary, that everything indicates that emotions are constructed by us, based on learned emotion categories. This biological research therefore now has a profound influence on spiritual research into consciousness.
The question of consciousness is still hotly debated. In philosophy, psychology, spirituality, neuroscience, and physics, there is currently no „all-encompassing answer“ to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. For us personally, on our journey through life, in our search for a more conscious being, this means that we can probably pave our way from all areas of knowledge, but that we should never follow an authority that claims an all-encompassing truth – and these self-proclaimed know-it-alls exist in all areas: there are neurobiologists who know that there is no free will; there are religious leaders who know that there is reincarnation or life after death; there are spiritual masters who know that the mind can only be freed through a certain technique – all of that is nothing more than dogma.
If one understands biological and spiritual consciousness research not as competitors, but as two lines that illuminate the same subject from different directions, a picture emerges that is greater than either of the two lines alone.
The example of constructed emotions – Feldmann-Barrett's work – shows how fruitful this dialogue can be. What spiritual research treated as an unchangeable basic emotion turns out to be a learned construct. This is not a devaluation of experience – on the contrary. It is a liberation. If emotions are constructed, then they can also be constructed differently. Immediate affectedness is not fate. It is malleable.
The biological line says: This is how the system is constituted. This is how it works. This is how it can be observed from the outside.
The spiritual line says: This is how it feels from the inside. This is how it can be changed from the inside.
Both are right. Both are incomplete without the other.
Freedom through Awareness
And yet, truth is not simply something completely subjective. It also makes no sense to simply say that the knowledge of others is just dogma, and one must find one's own truth. For what then remains for us as a consensus, as a basis for being with other people? We are social beings, and all our understanding of the world, of being, is based on concepts we have learned. But this learning is for the most part not a conscious process in which we are aware of all processes in our mind. Rather, it is a process of continuous conditioning. This certainly sounds negative to many at first. But in fact, this is precisely what defines us humans. So if our striving for freedom aims at the absence of conditioning, then that is inevitably doomed to failure. But if the goal of the search for freedom is the awareness of conditioning, and if it is influenced by conscious change in our behavior and our thinking, then change is possible, then freedom becomes understandable and tangible.
And precisely here the two lines connect to something practical: We can – through practice, through repeated experience, through conscious work on experience – not only change our behavior, but the way the brain works. Like Buddhist monks who have meditated for decades and whose brains behave measurably differently. Like people who learn through bodywork to perceive tension before it becomes a reaction. Like artists who find an inner order through creation that they previously lacked. That is not a mystical promise. It is a verifiable observation.
The Spiral
There is a relationship that stands at the center of all these considerations and which only fully reveals itself by thinking both lines of research together:
More conscious being leads to more consciousness — and more consciousness enables deeper conscious being.
What does that mean? Conscious being means the direct, attentive experience of the present moment – pausing, perceiving, noticing, before the habitual reaction sets in. It is not a technique. It is an attitude.
Biologically speaking, this attitude strengthens connections in the prefrontal cortex, improves the ability for emotion regulation, and expands the time window between stimulus and reaction. The brain learns to slow down where it would otherwise act automatically.
Spiritually speaking, the same pause opens the space in which insight can arise – not as information one absorbs, but as insight one experiences. Tibetan meditation practice not coincidentally calls this space clarity.
Both describe the same process: Whoever is more conscious develops greater consciousness – and with this consciousness, being becomes even more conscious. It is not a linear progression, but a spiral.
Form is Active Ingredient
Music measurably changes brain activity. Rhythm synchronizes neural processes. Breathing exercises influence the autonomic nervous system, lower cortisol levels, and change heart rate variability. Dance and bodywork activate proprioceptive networks that are directly linked to emotional regulation. All of this can be biologically demonstrated and measured. In this respect, these practices — as surprising as it may sound — also belong to biological consciousness research, at least to the extent that their effect is measurable.
But that is not what is essential about them.
What is essential is that they directly address immediate involvement — without detours via language or concept. A breath that goes deep into the belly does not explain itself. It works. A melody that suddenly moves one to tears requires no analysis. A dance that releases something that words have not reached — that does something. This is spiritual consciousness research in its purest form: direct work on subjective experience.
Here something fundamental becomes apparent: Art, aesthetics, and bodywork are the natural intersection of both lines of research. They are biologically effective and spiritually significant. And they do this not sequentially, but simultaneously — in the same moment, in the same body.
If emotions are constructed, if the brain is malleable, if spiritual practice has a biological effect — then the way we shape an experience is not secondary. Form is not packaging. Form is an active ingredient.
A sentence that is direct lands differently than a sentence that explains. A gesture that is fully executed changes something that a half-hearted gesture leaves untouched. Tearing a sheet of paper is not meant symbolically — it is a completion, physically performed, neuronally anchored. The rhythm in which something is said; the space in which something takes place; the silence afterward — all of these are not aesthetic decisions. They are interventions in the system.
This means: Whoever strives for change must take form as seriously as content. Not because it looks more beautiful — but because form determines whether something arrives, whether it reaches the body, whether it solidifies. Spiritual consciousness research has always known this: Ritual, repetition, embodiment are not aids. They are themselves part of the path.
Rituals and embodiments are however also not the whole path – without the work of the mind, they lead into emptiness. Only in combination with the concentrated activity of the mind does a path to change emerge. And just as significant it is, if one strives for change, not only to remain on an analytical-mental level, but to bring this work into a physical form.
Thus arises the state, in which consciousness and conscious being merge.