From & To Sathish #7 - Page 43

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First view of the Sun's south pole filmed by spacecraft

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Baakiyalakshmi | 12th & 13th June 2025 - Promo

Karaga, Cricket and Garbage

collide in Bengaluru

by Shoba Narayan, Hindustan Times, June 12, 2025

Is Bangalore the worst municipality in the country? Living in this city, it certainly feels like it. There is so much to be angry about in Bangalore these days. Cricket fans have died in a stampede and still the state government is passing the buck, scapegoating officers so that they can escape blame. On April 1st, the BBMP imposed a “garbage tax” collecting additional money for doing its job. This week, it crowed that the collections were so robust that the BBMP had collected half its annual target in just 2 months. I wasn’t present in Chinnaswamy stadium on that dark day when 11 cricket fans died. But I can speak from personal experience about this garbage tax.

I live in a building in Central Bangalore. Each apartment in my complex pays the garbage tax. But here is the thing. BBMP takes away nothing from our building. No garbage, nothing. The reason is that we have contracted with an organization called Hasiru Dala which takes away our wet waste, our recycled material and our electronic waste. We compost 10 percent of our waste in our building. To restate: BBMP’s intersection with our building in terms of garbage is zero. Yet, we pay, and not just a small amount.

There was garbage aplenty this week in Shivaji Nagar where I live though, thanks to the annual Shivaji Nagara Karaga, dedicated to the goddess, Droupadi Amman. In the evening lakhs of devotees gathered at the RBANMS grounds for a fire-walking ritual in which lines of men, women, and transgender people wore saffron clothes, carried lemons tied to their waists and walked on hot coals. The goddess idol was taken in a procession on the streets in the area ending in front of Maverick & Farmer coffee, which seemed like a perfect metaphor for the old and new in India.

Processions are common in Bangalore. Even death involves a procession with music bands, colourful garlands and hired weeping women. We are an expressive emotional culture after all. All of this got me thinking about what defines Bangalore or for that matter, what defines the new India where karaga and cricket co-exist? Yet, it was not the karaga madness that caused stampede deaths but the supposedly more sophisticated sport.

I love local processions because they show me the Indian aesthetic, which is maximalist, layered and sumptuous. Yet India defies simplistic categorization. For every burst of Holi colour, there is minimal Kerala with its white mundus and white kasavu sarees. For every Benares with its curved design elements- the vine-like flowering jaals and the ambe-paisley that cover the surfaces of Benares sarees, there is geometry of Andhra ikat.

India defies rules, categories and generalizations. That said, there are a few things we can say about India. We still remain rooted in our community. This I saw in the building of the chariots for the karaga. The whole community contributes and participates. We don’t like being alone and are comfortable in crowds. This I saw when I gathered with lakhs of others to watch the fire-walking. Like the two-headed ghandabherunda, we are comfortable with holding two opposite ideas in our heads. We are comfortable with contradictions. We attend rock concerts and cheer on fire-walkers. The sacred is common in India: sacred trees, plants, birds, rivers, animals and more. The sacred is not segregated to temples, churches or mosques. It is on the streets (again a contradiction that we are comfortable with). India exists across not just centuries; we exist across millennia. The karaga festival that happens even today is 800 years old and has its roots in the Mahabharata that is 2000 years old. At the same time, we have memes, Comicons, gaming conventions, rock concerts, and futuristic video games. The Indian is comfortable with both. He goes back millennia to the Mahabharata and embraces the future with gaming. We are local and global, modern and ancient, minimalist and maximalist. We are a supremely sensual culture. We like to adorn ourselves. The word alankara means decorating without an inch of space left for anything else. You still see this type of adornment on our gods. The Droupadi Amman who was paraded on the streets for the karaga was covered with garlands, silk clothes, and jewellery. We are also creative in our usage of decorative elements. No other culture has anklets for instance in such varied forms. For the karaga, the devotees all had beautiful dots marked above their eyebrows. These are called gopi patravali and were traditionally made with kumkum and Chandan. In the karaga, I noticed that the same tradition was followed. I asked a devotee why. “Droupadi Amman loves decoration,” she replied. “So you need to wear your makeup, your mascara, lipstick, gopi dots, and hairstyle. Whatever you like.” The lemons that she had tied in a sack around her waist too had a reason. “This time, I only have about 20 lemons,” she said. “Last year, I had over 50 lemons. Each was given to me by someone with a wish. I carry these wishes when I walk over fire and then distribute the lemons in the hope that their wishes get fulfilled.”

The design of the festival, its attire, its flow, all were uniquely Indian. India’s design language is only now coming into its own. Part of it is a function of economic prosperity. Just as Japan’s fashion, arts, manga, anime and design took over the world once its economy rose in the 90s, India and China are now on the rise. It is our turn to claim the world.

But first we have to sort out our garbage.

Shoba Narayan is a Bangalore-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications.

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How to plan a pilgrimage

Whether religious or not, you can undertake a special, meaningful kind of journey that could leave you changed forever

by Oliver Smith, travel writer

In many ways, the Plaza del Obradoiro is a public square like any other. Its day begins with the whistling of street cleaners and the watering of window boxes. It concludes with the thinning of evening crowds, and with stray cats stalking small-hours shadows. It’s a rallying point for wandering lovers, occasional hawkers and watchful police. It fulfils the role expected of a square – as a gathering place for townsfolk. Except that the town it serves is Santiago de Compostela, and towering high over the plaza is the great cathedral that houses the relics of St James. The plaza serves as the finishing line for one of the world’s greatest pilgrimages. So it is really a gathering place for all of Christendom: for pilgrims from around the world.

For some people who finish their trek here, pilgrimage is a spiritual endeavour. You’ll see new arrivals in states of euphoria, finally in the presence of the cathedral and relics which, in the eyes of many Roman Catholics and others, are portals to the divine. Some drop to the ground and kiss the cobblestones, reflecting on the countless faithful footsteps that have brought them 800 km from the French border (or other such distant starting points) to this holy threshold.

Among other things, pilgrimage can also be a way to connect with the dead. The last time I was at the Plaza del Obradoiro was in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. People unfurled banners showing images of loved ones, doubtless having imagined the company of the departed beside them on the long miles preceding.

Many pilgrims in the square were conspicuously less pious than others: some marked their arrival not with prayers but with selfies. At one point I heard the pop of a champagne bottle. Later, a local guide told me there were problems in the town with pilgrims drinking too much and behaving irresponsibly. Though, really, such misbehaviour has been a feature of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrims were also a boisterous bunch.

A day in the Plaza del Obradoiro reveals that pilgrims are not uniform. Some undertake a journey in grief, others in celebration. Some choose a solitary path, but, for others, companionship and solidarity are necessary spurs along the way. In the minds of many, pilgrimage is about a long and involving walk. But you can also find cycling pilgrims in the square, as well as the elderly and the infirm who come to the holy city by aeroplane and car. Some of the pilgrims are not even religious, content to find their own meaning or reassurance by stepping in the footsteps of generations who have gone before.

What is a pilgrimage?

Pilgrimage is an elusive term: shapeshifting and malleable. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Shinto and many other religions all have pilgrimage traditions – but pilgrimage also exists outside religion. It is associated with Santiago, Mecca and Jerusalem – but also with Graceland, Abbey Road, Harry Potter locations, and various sports grounds. The term is sometimes applied to commemorative journeys to the battlegrounds of the Somme and the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. A pilgrim can travel through realms of light and darkness. In truth, a pilgrimage is something that can be defined only on a pilgrim’s own terms.

At its root, pilgrimage reflects a human habit of making meaning by making journeys. On a deeper level, it has been hypothesised, pilgrimage is a manifestation of an innate instinct to travel. Homo sapiens has generally been settled only for 10,000 or so of our 300,000 years of existence on Earth: pilgrimage might be an expression of a vestigial nomadism that lingers within us, made ritual. This much is uncertain. But we can be confident that the practice of pilgrimage is grounded in a deeper truth: that, on every journey, we can find lessons to guide us on the far longer path of a lifetime.

While there are no universal parameters for pilgrimages, they can have some telling features. People often embark on pilgrimages at transitional points in their life: bereavement, redundancy or divorce, leaving university or starting retirement. Go to any pilgrimage place and you will likely learn much about humanity, finding people with their barriers down, inhibitions suspended, quick to share their story and hear those of others. For many, a pilgrimage is a hiatus in which to calibrate a new direction in life – like pausing to take a compass bearing – before continuing onward.

In the course of writing a book about pilgrimage practice in Britain, my home country, I travelled widely: I set foot in many churches and cathedrals, slept in sacred sea caves, climbed holy mountains and, once, marooned myself at sea. I met some people who were disappointed by their pilgrimage – had set out expecting divine revelation where none came, had found the mundane rather than the metaphysical at the end of the road. But others were genuinely changed. They found transcendence in the daily drumbeat of footsteps on a path, and earnestly felt a resonance undetectable to others, in those places set apart.

To embark on a pilgrimage – to ally a journey to a greater purpose – can be stimulating for the mind and enriching for the body, whether or not you believe in such a thing as a soul. Planning a pilgrimage, irrespective of your destination or your beliefs, will place a marker in your life. Today, even though church attendance has declined in western Europe, the Plaza del Obradoiro is busier with pilgrims than it has been for centuries. The path to Santiago was trodden by only tens of pilgrims in 1972; in 2024, half a million came. In this square and in many other such places, people are becoming alive to the potential of pilgrimage.

What to do

Establish your intention

A first step for planning a pilgrimage is to ask yourself: what is it you plan to gain from your journey? In what way do you hope to return enriched?

If we look at the Christian context, inspiration for a journey often comes from a saint, such as St James in Santiago, St Brigid in Kildare, or the Virgin Mary in sites like Lourdes or Fátima. Some pilgrims intend to develop personal relationships with saints, whom they hope will become intercessors (or go-betweens) to God. On a more local level, some saints have historically been associated with curing particular ailments, others solicited for assistance in matters of love.

For a 21st-century pilgrim of no fixed faith, there are no defined parameters – though parallels endure. Many secular pilgrims also hope to connect with a personality: they might visit a place associated with a lost family member, for example, or make a journey to a place of ancestral origins. Spending time in nature is another priority for many contemporary pilgrims. This has an echo in Celtic Christianity, with its tradition of ‘two books’, the first being the Bible and the second being all creation, where one might read God’s word in the natural world. Spending time with fellow travellers; exploring new places; becoming fitter and healthier through exercise – these are also popular and valid motivations for modern pilgrimage, which can easily coexist in a pilgrim’s mind.

Ultimately, people make their own rules. ‘Secular pilgrimage is a huge area of research among pilgrimage ethnographers,’ explains Anne Bailey, a research associate at the History Faculty at Oxford University. ‘The most frequently quoted example is Graceland and Elvis – “Elvis Week” has parallels with saints’ feast days,’ she tells me. ‘But there’s also the new pilgrimage route around the hometown of the still-much-alive Harry Styles.’

There are also organisations that can help point the way. The British Pilgrimage Trust, for example, was established in 2014 to promote pilgrimage in and outside of organised religion. The co-founder Guy Hayward explains that the organisation has championed the idea of intention – of setting out with a desired outcome – that works across religious affiliations, and for people with none. He believes that pilgrimage can make for a kind of enhanced travel experience. ‘“Pilgrimage” is a password that unlocks things,’ he says. ‘If you use the word “pilgrimage”, you start to think in these particular ways. Indeed the word itself can be something that drives you forward. On a pilgrimage route, the external path you are walking goes together with an internal path. You are giving the mind and the body a direction.’

One of the most important pilgrimages I have undertaken was not to a shrine nor even to a religious site, but rather to a radar installation. My late grandfather served at one of the most remote bases in the European theatre of the Second World War: a Royal Navy outpost on the edge of the Arctic circle, in a wilderness periodically visited by polar bears. My journey there required its own devotion – fording swollen rivers, enduring North Atlantic storms – but I had the solidarity of my cousin by my side. Our journey was indeed guided and powered by an intention. By a belief that, in crossing that wilderness, we might better understand our grandfather. We hoped that, by sharing the experience of that wild and remote place, by standing where he had stood, our pilgrimage might cut across the passage of time.

Intention is one thing that distinguishes a pilgrim from an ordinary tourist or traveller. From this starting point, a direction of travel becomes apparent.

Choose an appropriate destination

A second, related step is deciding what destination is appropriate for you. You might find that your intention, your background, or both, mark a particular destination as a good fit.

Members of an organised religion will likely already have answers. Millions of Muslims set out on hajj and umrah to Mecca; though, in fact, an even bigger annual pilgrimage is the Arba’in pilgrimage to Karbala in Iraq, undertaken by Shia Muslims. The biggest in the world, meanwhile, is India’s Kumbh Mela – a Hindu gathering which, at its largest, attracts some 400 million people. Some places serve as pilgrimage destinations for multiple religions – adherents of Abrahamic religions converge on Jerusalem, for instance.

Pilgrimage places can also suit different needs. Immersion in water, for example, is often associated with rebirth, purification or the washing away of sin, such as in the River Jordan or the Ganges at Varanasi. Drinking water – such as from a holy well or spring – is regarded as a means of healing in some traditions; Christians might head to Lourdes, or to the many active holy wells in Ireland. Some sites are associated with wisdom: ancient Greek pilgrims headed to the Oracle at Delphi to hear prophecies. Modern pilgrims, seeking the wisdom of historical knowledge, go to Delphi, too.

Certain traditional pilgrimage routes have found favour with pilgrims of less-fixed faith or no faith. Foremost among them is the Camino de Santiago, a network of paths unravelling across Spain and beyond, with variants that cater to different abilities and tastes. First-timers might opt for the classic journeys along the Camino Francés or the Camino del Norte, both measuring around 800 km. A shorter pilgrimage is the Camino Ingles – the route once taken by English travellers disembarking boats at the port of Ferrol, just 109 km north of Santiago. One of the quietest is the Via de la Plata, which sets out from Seville across the forests and furnace-hot plains of Andalusia and Extremadura. The pilgrimage is a Christian one, though committed Christians are accustomed to seeing those of less rigid faith on the trail.

Europe’s other great long-distance pilgrimage is the Via Francigena, a route from Canterbury to Rome that was recounted by Sigeric, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the 10th century CE. The modern path sees a fraction of the foot traffic of the Camino de Santiago as it passes from the white cliffs of England to the Po valley, via the snow-capped Alps. A literal and metaphorical high point comes as the route crests the Great St Bernard Pass on the Swiss-Italian border. Here, perched at an elevation of some 2,500 m, travellers lodge at the Great St Bernard Hospice – a pilgrim hostel in existence since the 11th century, whose monks (and their famous canine companions) rescued lost wayfarers from the snowdrifts as part of their sacred vocation.

Japan, too, has marketed its traditional pilgrimage routes to people overseas. The Kumano Kodo is a millennia-old network of paths across the wooded hills of the Kii Peninsula, converging on a series of shrines where emperors came to pay tribute in centuries past. Kumano pilgrims traditionally followed a synthesis of belief systems: combining Buddhism and Shintoism with elements of mountain and nature worship. Pilgrims of various stripes still come to immerse themselves in the natural world amid tumbling waterfalls and thick forests. The megacities of Osaka and Kyoto are close by, but feel distant to those treading the ancient stone steps. Another popular Japanese pilgrimage trail is the Shikoku pilgrimage: unusually, a circular route travelling some 1,200 km and passing by 88 temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku.

These are but a tiny fraction of the pilgrimages you could choose to embark upon. Of course, you might have your own, very different pilgrimage destination in mind: one that has a personal connection, makes sense to you, and fits with your intention. But if you do decide to travel on a route or to a destination that has spiritual significance for people, be mindful that, if you do not bring faith, you should bring humility, a willingness to learn, and all respect for the trail and others upon it.

Decide how to get there

Asked to picture a pilgrim, chances are you will envisage a traveller on foot, perhaps one with worn boots and calloused feet. For much of pre-industrial history, walking was the practical way for the masses to get from A to B – and many contemporary pilgrims consciously place themselves in this tradition by setting out on foot. Some remove their shoes for a portion of their journey, as an act of penitence or else as a way of connecting with the earth below.

But this is only part of the story. Most Muslim pilgrims fly to Jeddah for onward connections to Mecca. In India, pilgrimage takes place in large part via the country’s rail network, with pilgrimage trains laid on at certain times of year. Church groups shuttle about the Holy Land on coaches and minibuses. Polynesian navigators may have sailed in canoes to the sacred island of Raiatea, at the centre of the Pacific. The pilgrimage church at the centre of Lake Bled in Slovenia, is accessible only by pleasure boat (unless you swim). The most famous pilgrims in English literature – those of The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) – travelled on horseback.

In some cases, a pilgrimage insists on a prescribed, processional path (such as following the Via Dolorosa around the Old City of Jerusalem). But, in most cases, it is not about following a strictly defined course by a certain means, but rather a process of being brought to your destination, irrespective of exactly how this is achieved.

If you are physically able to, there are good reasons to make your pilgrimage on foot, at least for part of the journey. The symbiotic relationship between walking and thinking is much written about: consider Friedrich Nietzsche’s line that ‘all truly great thoughts are conceived while walking’, or Henry David Thoreau’s observation that ‘the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.’ As Bailey tells me: ‘The attraction of walking is [also] strongly connected to contemporary values and trends: slow travel, mental health, physical fitness, seeking challenge, and the love of the natural world.’

There is an additional consideration: walking is often the most sociable means of pilgrimage. You will likely find people proceeding in the same direction, bound for the same finishing point. In a way, a pilgrimage path can be rather like a river: tributaries converging and fortifying the main flow, which becomes more powerful as it reaches its culmination. It is easy to feel solidarity when you and other walkers are all orientated in the same direction, and when you and your companions are striving for the same goal.

However you decide to travel, but especially if you go by foot, the same rules apply as for any hike: calibrate the length and difficulty of your journey to your physical condition; and be conscious that your daily mileage is likely to be predetermined by the accommodation options and transport infrastructure along the route. On quieter and more obscure pilgrimage paths, you may be on your own: in need of map-reading and navigation skills, far from accommodation, and obliged to carry heavy packs with food and camping equipment. Even on the Via Francigena, there are long sections where infrastructure is thin. In contrast, on the busiest routes of the Camino – especially the Camino Francés – you can find accommodation to suit all budgets, an abundance of restaurants, plus tour operators that offer guided and self-guided packages, organise luggage transfers, and can even help you out if you get into trouble.

Get ready to make the most of your journey

A central component of pilgrimage is entering an altogether different environment: untethering yourself from your home, turning your thoughts away from the mundane to consider bigger questions. Although it is easier, in the 21st century, for a pilgrim to travel further and faster than ever before, it is also harder than ever to escape those things that bind us to the everyday. The constant chirruping of emails and messages on phones, the onslaught of 24/7 news – these things can be obstructions to an immersive and fulfilling pilgrimage. As much as is practical or possible, it’s a good idea to minimise these intrusions, to allow yourself to be caught in the rhythms of the road and so be receptive to the teachings of your journey. In this sense, pilgrimage should be an escape.

Another intrinsic part of pilgrimage is the use of ritual, particularly as a way of marking your arrival or signifying an end point to your travel. Many in Santiago de Compostela hug the statue of St James, while in Mecca there is a suite of rituals, from walking around the Kaaba anticlockwise to the stoning of the devil. Often there is the implication that your physical action has an echo in the metaphysical world. What’s incontestable is that, by repeating a ritual, you place yourself in a greater lineage of pilgrims who have done the same before you – as well as those yet to come.

Votive offerings are a common form of ritual: candles, statues or images carried from afar are often left in gratitude at saints’ shrines. Gifts are often left for Elvis Presley at Graceland, for ritual can be part of secular pilgrimage too. When my cousin and I finally reached our grandpa’s radar base, we performed a spontaneous pilgrimage ritual of our own devising: pouring whisky into the ground in his honour.

Like many pilgrims, we also returned home from our journey with an object – a keyhole that had lain high on the Icelandic cliffs for 80 years, rusting up in the realm of seabirds – which we hoped would import the magic of that place into our homes. Pilgrim badges, stones, fridge magnets, souvenirs of all kinds – such objects can help return your thoughts to the lessons of your pilgrimage upon your return. They are tangible things with intangible value.

There are many other ways to make the most of your pilgrimage. You might consider keeping a journal, writing a blog, or reflecting on your motivation as you go. Reading widely in advance (you could start with the reading list below) can make your journey more fulfilling – though always be wary of dogmatists who tell you what a pilgrimage should or should not be. It is a word over which no one has ownership. It is up to you to blaze your own trail.

Pilgrimage involves a journey away from home, but, in many traditions, the outbound journey is secondary to the return, when you import and apply what you have gained from your travels. Your end destination can be seen as a starting point for the far greater pilgrimage of a lifetime. The return will present chances to reflect – to consider new connections, or old ones strengthened. You might feel newly equipped to make reappraisals, or to make wiser choices. It is only back home where the worth of a pilgrimage is proved.

Learn more

Mountain pilgrimage

Pilgrimage often centres on distinct geographical features. You can find many holy islands, including off the coasts of Britain and Japan. There are also sacred rivers, and sacred lakes such as those in the Himalayas and the Andes. But if there is one feature of the pilgrimage landscape that towers above all others, it is holy mountains – found almost everywhere in the world.

Mountains can be seen as sacred because of a perceived proximity to heaven. The weather that brews about their summits can be an indicator of almighty power – along with the rockfalls, avalanches or lava flows that periodically tumble from their slopes. The tapestry of ecosystems that a mountain possesses – from ice field to moorland, forest to meadow – can suggest an entire world rendered in miniature. And, in making the treacherous ascent of a mountain, the pilgrim is required to undergo a rite of passage, and to prove their faith.

Some holy mountains are well trodden. Pilgrims can sometimes be found among the hordes of tourists scaling the volcanic heights of Mount Fuji (3,776 m) – the highest peak in Japan, revered in Buddhist and Shinto traditions for its perfect symmetry. Also busy – and more manageable for someone of average fitness – is Adam’s Peak (2,243 m) in Sri Lanka. Some Christians associate it with St Thomas, Hindus with Shiva, and Buddhists with the Buddha – a case study in how mountains can speak to diverse spiritual imaginations. Fuji and Adam’s Peak share attributes common to many holy peaks: a high degree of prominence and a sharp, often pyramidal shape set apart from others.

The mountains of the Old Testament attract pilgrims: such as Mount Sinai in Egypt (2,285 m) where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments. Mount Ararat in Turkey (5,165 m) – where Noah’s Ark is believed to have landed after the flood – makes for a technical climb attempted only by committed alpinists. Height isn’t everything, however, and other peaks are accessible to Christian pilgrims. Every July, crowds of Catholic pilgrims climb Croagh Patrick in Ireland (764 m) – a lone sentinel atop which St Patrick is said to have banished demons with the striking of a bell. A trickle of pilgrims come at Easter and Michaelmas to climb the small holy peak of Skirrid (486 m) in south Wales, where – according to folklore – the Archangel Michael battled the devil. Across Europe, you can find less explicit holy mountains: statues of the Virgin or iron crosses adorn peaks such as the Matterhorn (4,477 m), keeping watch over those who live in their shadow.

Islam has a prominent holy mountain – just outside Mecca stands Jabal Al-Nour (642 m), on whose slopes Muhammad was visited by the Archangel Gabriel in a mountain cave. They exist also in the Americas: Incan belief holds many mountains sacred, foremost among them Ausangate (6,384 m), Veronica (5,893 m) and Salkantay (6,271 m), set around Cusco in Peru. A more nebulous, New Age tradition swirls around Mount Shasta (4,317 m) in California – seen as an energy centre.

Climbing a peak, overcoming adversity and reaching a sacred summit is the traditional mountain pilgrimage paradigm. However, there is another kind of holy mountain: those that go unclimbed, whose resident deities remain undisturbed and thus whose sanctity remains, in a way, more intact. One example is the mighty Kailash in Tibet (6,638 m) – visited by Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Bon pilgrims, who perform circular pilgrimages around its base. It’s also true of the soaring Machapuchare (6,993 m) – a striking-looking peak overlooking Pokhara in Nepal, which, like Kailash, is associated with Shiva. In relatively recent times, another peak has joined this small group: climbing was long discouraged on Uluru in Australia (863 m) before it became fully prohibited in 2019, out of respect to the Anangu people for whom the monolith is sacred. For many pilgrims, just being in the presence of these peaks inspires wonder enough.

In the climbing of a mountain, many pilgrimage dynamics are amplified: the idea of placing yourself in a wildly different environment, the counter-gravitational pull of the summit as an end point (which looms not just in a pilgrim’s imagination, but often also on the physical horizon throughout the ascent). It is also about the opening up of an aerial view on the world below – the place that a pilgrim ordinarily inhabits, and to which they return with a new and enhanced perspective, both literally and metaphorically, upon their descent.

https://psyche.co/stories-of-change/how-i-became-a-psychoanalyst-by-losing-my-keys

How I became a psychoanalyst by losing my keys

What are we really doing when we sit in a room with our patients and exchange some words?

by Jordan Osserman

It took me five years to certify as a clinical psychoanalyst. During that time, I attended weekly seminars and case discussion groups, treated a variety of patients, participated in supervision sessions, and underwent intensive personal therapy.

But the closer I got to the conclusion of my training, the more unsure I felt about what, exactly, my newfound profession entailed. Unlike therapies that follow treatment guidelines for specifically diagnosed mental disorders, psychoanalysis prides itself on working with each patient in his or her uniqueness. It’s also notoriously ‘light touch’: psychoanalysts tend to listen closely but make interpretations sparingly, in the belief that meaningful change must come from patients’ own desires, rather than obedience to their therapist’s views.

In practice, this can feel quite opaque and so, although I’d ticked off all the boxes needed for my accreditation, fundamental questions remained: what are we really doing when we sit in a room with our patients and exchange some words? How do I know if I’m helping?

One morning, deep in these doubts, I walked into the building where I practise to meet Ricardo, my first patient of the day. A surge of anxiety came over me: I suddenly realised I’d forgotten my office keys and there wasn’t enough time to get home and back. I sent an apologetic message to Ricardo cancelling our session, relieved I had at least arrived early enough that he wasn’t there to see the panic on my face.

Then, a few weeks later, also before Ricardo’s session, I misplaced my keys again.

Ricardo was, in many ways, a ‘model’ patient: he never cancelled without plenty of advance notice, filled our sessions with memories and associations, leapt on my every interpretation, discovered significant insights and made major breakthroughs in areas of his life where he’d previously seemed stuck.

‘Before I started seeing you,’ he said in a pivotal session, ‘I read that David Lynch never did therapy because he was afraid it would stifle his creativity, and that worried me. More recently, I saw a film about an artist who was in analysis for 20 years, and felt it was essential to his creativity. When we first started, I needed this therapy to help me get through a crisis. But now I don’t feel I need therapy in that way; it feels like it’s about understanding myself better.’

My gentle prodding was turning into unhelpful haranguing – making me yet another critical authority figure in his life

I’d recently moved to an office with a couch – perhaps the ultimate symbol of traditional psychotherapeutic authority. After this session, Ricardo became the first patient I invited to use my new couch. Meeting him there confirmed to me the upwards trajectory of my career.

Meanwhile, another patient, Tom, regularly failed to turn up to my consulting room. Just as he was about to make his way over, he’d realise he’d misplaced his wallet, or his keys. It seemed clear to me that this symptom, which also cropped up in his work and social life, functioned as an unconscious rebellion against his feeling of being straitjacketed by social, professional and familial obligations. Every time he screwed up, Tom would engage in harsh self-recriminations, crystallised around his idea that he was a ‘loser’. Consciously, he regularly fantasised about winning a large sum of money that would buy him out of his unwanted duties. He seemed uninterested in exploring whether behind this fantasy of winning might lie any unconscious appeal in losing. Over time, my gentle prodding was turning into unhelpful haranguing – making me yet another critical authority figure in his life.

By losing my keys, then, it seemed I had mirrored something of Tom’s ‘loser’ behaviour – not with Tom but with Ricardo, the very patient who made me feel like I was winning. Alongside these ‘bungled actions’, as Sigmund Freud called them, I was also experiencing recurring dreams: I’d find myself meeting a patient somewhere other than my consulting room – a coffee shop, on the street – and worry that I’d somehow messed up the treatment. In one of these, Tom stood at the door of my messy bedroom. On my nightstand lay a bottle of PrEP, the medication used by many gay men to protect against HIV transmission. Tom pointed at it as if to communicate he had discovered a dirty secret about me.

No matter how many hoops I jumped through, some things were fundamentally beyond my control

I was also going through a family crisis. My mother, a continent away and recently diagnosed with cancer, faced a long and uncertain course of treatment; her partner, once her primary source of support, was experiencing rapidly worsening dementia. While she attended medical appointments, he became agitated and sometimes went missing. One evening, he drove to his old home in another city where he thought he still lived and, unbeknown to us, spent the night shivering outside the building in the cold. In that case, the problem wasn’t keys that were lost but those that were found – the car keys my mother had hidden to keep him safe.

I spoke about all this to my own psychoanalyst in one of our sessions. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ he responded simply, ‘if there was a key to the unconscious?’

It was a seemingly light, almost throwaway line but it touched on something fundamental. I laughed hysterically. All this time, I’d been projecting an image of authority – the brilliant psychoanalyst, with his fancy consulting room and clever ideas – underneath which lay deep anxiety. In both my personal and professional life, I was searching for a ‘key’ that could unlock all my difficulties. But no matter how many hoops I jumped through, some things were fundamentally beyond my control.

After that, I stopped losing my keys.

Psychoanalysts listen for things ordinarily hidden from awareness that emerge in the margins of our everyday lives: dreams, mistakes, and slips of the tongue. The idea is that, by taking the ‘unconscious’ seriously, we might discover parts of ourselves seeking expression. For example, railing against a colleague she didn’t like, a patient once said to me: ‘I don’t want to be a girl.’ She’d meant to say: ‘I don’t want to be that girl,’ and, upon my pointing this out, she quickly corrected her ‘mistake’. But when I invited her to consider what she’d actually said – rather than what she’d consciously meant to say – she spoke of her long history of struggling to fit into feminine ideals. This cast her problem with her colleague in a different light, enabling her to consider different solutions.

The therapist must be able to sit with the fact that the patient has lost this key – or isn’t ready to find it yet

But the tricky thing about this theory of the unconscious is that the therapist is not exempt from it. Listening to the unconscious – your own, or a patient’s – means being comfortable with things that are unknown, that we don’t have control over, and that may call into question who we think we are. Therapists may be tempted to adopt the impossible role of solving every problem, but it’s the patient who holds the ‘key’. The therapist must be able to sit with the fact that, for whatever reason, the patient has lost this key – or isn’t ready to find it yet.

For months, I’d been haunted by guilt over the distance separating me from my mother – a desperation for control and certainty in my family situation mirroring my anxieties as a therapist. I was spending hours every day attempting to help from afar, in ways that felt both overwhelming and futile. In another session with my psychoanalyst, I spoke about how other people always seemed to have good reasons for the boundaries separating them from their parents – kids, demanding jobs, pressing obligations – while, for some unknown reason, I struggled to justify any limits. ‘It feels like I have to invent the limit myself,’ I said, half in despair, half in quiet revelation. ‘Precisely!’ my analyst responded.

After that session, something subtle but profound shifted. I became gentler with myself and with my patients, less fixated on outcomes or mastery, and more open to hearing and drawing attention to the unconscious – even when I didn’t know what it was trying to say.

One afternoon, Tom mentioned a punishment dream he’d had, in which he had to ‘pay the ultimate price’. He associated this scene with a memory from childhood, playing in his father’s office and enjoying a chocolate bar from the vending machine. Without any clear outcome in mind, I found myself asking, ‘Who paid for the chocolate bar?’ Tom paused briefly before replying, ‘My father did – he always paid in the end.’ There was clearly something significant here, about debt and pleasure or perhaps the burdens Tom carried from his father – but I resisted the urge to rush in with an interpretation and instead drew the session to a close. The therapeutic work had already, quietly taken place. Tom left the session visibly lighter, with new ideas about himself the following week.

From the outside, these moments probably seem inconsequential: no coping mechanisms offered, no false beliefs corrected, not even much overt comfort provided – just a therapist musing out loud without having much grasp of what’s going on himself. Yet, somehow, such moments often contain exactly what’s needed.

I’ve come to appreciate that not every revelation from the unconscious needs a comprehensive explanation. There are the words that need to be said, but there are also those that can’t be – at least not yet. Perhaps the real job is to be sensitive to that difference.

Psychoanalysis doesn’t provide you with the master keys to unlock life’s mysteries; it’s more likely to help you laugh at yourself when the keys inevitably go missing again, allowing these small failures and disruptions to help you appreciate your desires, rather than frustrate them. The work remains challenging, and I am often wracked with self-doubt. But to accept something is missing is also to be open to something new in its place. Being a loser isn’t always such a bad thing after all.

Jordan Osserman is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, UK, and a clinical psychoanalyst in East London.

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Consciousness Has a Psychology Problem

The biases that shape our understanding of the mind.

By Iris Berent

eeing the striking magenta of bougainvillea. Tasting a rich morning latte. Feeling the sharp pain of a needle prick going into your arm. These subjective experiences are the stuff of the mind. What is “doing the experiencing,” the 3-pound chunk of meat in our head, is a tangible object that works on electrochemical signals—physics, essentially. How do the two—our mental experiences and physical brains—interact?

The puzzle of consciousness seems to be giving science a run for its money. The problem, to be clear, isn’t merely to pinpoint “where it all happens” in the brain (although this, too, is far from trivial). The real mystery is how to bridge the gap between the mental, first-person stuff of consciousness and the physical lump of matter inside the cranium.

Some think the gap is unbreachable. The philosopher David Chalmers, for instance, has argued that consciousness is something special and distinct from the physical world. If so, it may never be possible to explain consciousness in terms of physical brain processes. No matter how deeply scientists understand the brain, for Chalmers, this would never explain how our neurons produce consciousness. Why should a hunk of flesh, teeming with chemical signals and electrical charges, experience a point of view? There seems to be no conceivable reason why meaty matter would have this light of subjectivity “on the inside.” Consciousness, then, is a “hard problem”—as Chalmers has labeled it—indeed.

Can a person lack conscious experience, even if their body looks just like mine?

The possibility that consciousness itself isn’t anything physical raises burning questions about whether, for example, an AI can fall in love with its programmer. And since consciousness is a natural phenomenon, much like gravity or genes, these questions carry huge implications. Science explains the natural world by physical principles only. So if it turns out that one natural phenomenon transcends the laws of physics, then it is not only the science of consciousness that is in trouble—our entire understanding of the natural world would require serious revision.

But before we run off too fast and far, let us pause, take a breath, and reconsider. The mind is hard to explain in physical terms—this much is obvious. Why it is hard, however, is far from evident. In fact, this question is open to two competing explanations. The first explanation puts the blame on what consciousness is—that it is not physical, as Chalmers claims. Alternatively, this impression (that consciousness isn’t physical) could arise from within, as a result of human bias—a psychological delusion.

Psychological biases are relevant because philosophers and scientists heavily rely on their intuitions as they try to explain what consciousness is. Is it special—can it reveal more about the world than what I can infer from my reason alone? Does my conscious experience seem physical? Can a person lack conscious experience, even if their body looks and works just like mine?

In these mini-thought experiments, intuitions are data. Since consciousness generates intuitions, intuitions can speak to what consciousness is, at least in principle. The problem is that the “psychology of psychology” is a tricky business.

Human cognition, as we know, is laced with biases—we can readily recognize these distortions in visual illusions, auditory hallucinations, and logical fallacies. So, if our perception of the external world is distorted, why assume our internal perception is truthful? In fact, people are demonstrably plagued by multiple biases that cloud their reasoning about how their own psyche works.

Intuitive dualism is one such psychological bias. It suggests to us that the mind is ethereal, distinct from the body. My research suggests that intuitive dualism arises in humans naturally and spontaneously—it emerges from the two innate systems: One guides our understanding of the physical properties of objects; another helps us “read” the minds of others. So it is not the product of rationally analyzing what exists. It is a psychological delusion that arises from within the human mind itself.

However, intuitive dualism has been shown to give rise to various prejudices, ranging from the denial of human nature to our misguided fascination with neuroscience and the tendency to stigmatize people with psychiatric disorders. Our consciousness intuitions could arise from the same source as these biases.

So, if consciousness appears somehow distinct from physical reality, then this conclusion could well arise not from what consciousness really is, but rather from what our psyche is telling us, courtesy of intuitive dualism.

How can we tell, then, whether or not our intuitions (that consciousness is not physical) reflect what consciousness really is? It looks like we are at a stalemate. And that’s a problem for the “hard problem.”

Recent research helps us move forward. To see how, suppose you inspect yourself in the mirror: Your face has an unhealthy greenish hue. Before rushing to the ER, you step outside and reexamine your image in natural light. The greenish appearance changes, you are all clear; the strange color was likely an artifact of the lighting. Shifting intuitions are diagnostic—they can help us identify our own biases.

The same logic can help us sift consciousness fact from fiction. If our intuitions about consciousness faithfully reflect what consciousness is, and if the nature of consciousness is invariant—meaning it doesn’t change from being physical to non-physical—then our intuitions about the nature of consciousness should also not change. In other words, they should not vary by context. But if consciousness intuitions shift, such that, in some situations, consciousness seems ethereal, and in others, it seems physical, then it’s likely something about our psyche that explains these intuitions, not consciousness itself.

When such shifts are detected, it’s a telltale sign of a psychological delusion, just like the shifts of your greenish complexion above. And if we could further explain how these shifts arise from within—by spelling out their psychological causes, then our confidence in this psychological explanation would increase further. Such shifts in consciousness intuitions, then, suggest that our intuitions can’t be trusted to reveal reliable information about the nature of our minds. This is precisely what psychological experiments probing our intuitions about consciousness show.

Why should a hunk of flesh experience a point of view?

Sometimes this involves asking people to consider the idea of a philosophical zombie. Philosophical zombies are hypothetical creatures that lack consciousness yet everything else physical about them—including their biology and brain chemistry—matches humans perfectly. The idea is that if someone believes consciousness is distinct from physical matter, then that person should think philosophical zombies could, in theory, exist. And if philosophical zombies are conceivable, then perhaps the possession of an intact human body does not guarantee consciousness. Consciousness, so the argument goes, is thus distinct from the physical.

When philosophers are surveyed, most respond that, indeed, zombies are conceivable. But what about most people—do they, too, share these intuitions?

In a 2021 paper published in the journal Cognition, researchers Eugen Fischer and Justin Sytsma had participants think about whether the idea of a “philosophical zombie” made sense. To find out, they asked people to rate whether philosophical zombies would be capable of having conscious experiences, feelings, and emotions. Responses hovered around the “neutral” midpoint of the seven-point rating scale (4, “neither agree nor disagree”). Few participants, to be sure, outright denied that zombies are conscious, and fewer yet denied that zombies are conscious while affirming that they have a functional, humanlike body (as the instructions to the experiment suggested). This last result could either indicate that most people cannot fully conceive of philosophical zombies or that participants are simply reluctant to respond “no” (e.g., No, zombies aren’t conscious!).

Indeed, in a 2022 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my colleagues and I showed that when participants are forced to give a binary response (instead of a seven-point rating scale that allows them to “sit on the fence”), participants state that a perfect replica of a person’s body will not maintain their mental states—thoughts and beliefs. Insofar as consciousness is a mental state, this would imply that zombies do not seem possible.

Either way, participants in Fischer and Sytsma’s study certainly did not ascribe much conscious experience to zombies, even though the problem framing clearly established that these creatures have a human body. Consciousness, for them, seems to be at least partly distinct from the physical.

So far, then, it looks like most people intuit that consciousness is ethereal; at least, that is what they say about philosophical zombies. It is therefore tempting to conclude that what’s true for zombies could hold for the many other scenarios that philosophers have used to probe our consciousness intuitions. After all, if we assume that these scenarios shed light on what consciousness is—and for what we know, consciousness does not change—then what’s true in one case ought to be true in all.

The physicality case, it would seem, is closed; our intuitions tell us that consciousness isn’t physical. So strong is this tacit conviction that, to my knowledge, no one has bothered to check whether this is really the case. But it turns out that when most people are asked to consider a second famous case—the problem of Mary in the black and white room—people tend to view consciousness as squarely physical.

Mary, the thought experiment goes, is a neuroscientist who is an expert on color vision. Mary herself, however, has never seen color, as she lives in a black and white room. Now, suppose that Mary steps out of that room and sees a red rose for the first time. How significant is that conscious experience? Will it register or “show up” in Mary’s brain?

A series of experiments from my lab at Northeastern University presented participants with several versions of Mary’s case (a total of 180 people across four different experiments). Their task was to rate not only the significance of that new conscious experience (specifically, “How transformative is Mary’s experience seeing the color red? How much has her grasp of ‘red’ changed by seeing the red rose?”) but also its embodiment—whether it is likely to “show up” in Mary’s brain.

The philosophical literature leads us to expect that Mary’s new conscious experience is significant—it has utterly transformed her grasp of color, and participants agreed. In fact, their ratings in response to the “transformative” question (above) were significantly above the midpoint of the seven-point rating scale, so clearly, participants did view this experience as quite significant. But when asked whether Mary’s conscious experience will “show up” in a brain scan (i.e., in Mary’s physical body), they said it will!

Participants further believed that Mary’s first conscious experience of red is more likely to manifest in the brain scan than all of her “abstract” knowledge about color vision. In fact, the more likely participants were to state the “red” experience would “show up” in the brain, the more transformative it seemed. Thus, not only did participants consider Mary’s conscious experience as squarely embodied, but embodiment was also linked to the significance of this experience.

Consciousness does not change—what’s true in one case ought to be true in all.

In another experiment (from the same study), participants were asked to assume that Mary’s first encounter with the red rose happens in one of two conditions (presented to Mary as part of a carefully controlled experiment). One condition has Mary looking at the red rose in full view for several seconds; when asked to report her experience, Mary confirms seeing it. In a second condition, the red rose is presented for just a fraction of a second. When asked about what she saw, Mary reports seeing nothing. Despite this, participants are told, seeing the red rose for just a fraction of a second is likely to have registered in Mary’s brain since research has shown that after such subliminal presentations, the word “rose” comes to mind more readily.

The two conditions (the subliminal and conscious), then, are identical except that one engenders consciousness and the other doesn’t. By comparing them, we can directly examine intuitions about consciousness (as opposed to “seeing color”). If responses to the two conditions differ, then, this difference will shed light on how consciousness is perceived—whether it is transformative and whether it is embodied in Mary’s brain.

Results showed that participants considered Mary’s conscious experience (in the first condition) as more transformative than her subliminal experience (in the second condition); this is only expected from the philosophical analysis. But, contrary to what might be expected given the “hard problem,” participants also considered the conscious experience to be more likely to “show up” in Mary’s brain compared to the subliminal experience. And once again, “transformative” ratings were positively linked with the brain registering the experience, such that the stronger the intuitions that Mary’s conscious experience registered in her brain, the more transformative it seemed.

These outcomes are striking for two reasons. First, the results show that, when people consider Mary’s case, consciousness seems to them squarely physical. This flies in the face of the common wisdom that consciousness seems not physical. Second, when compared with the zombie’s case, it appears that these psychological intuitions shift.

In the zombie’s case, consciousness seems ethereal; in Mary’s case, it seems physical. And if different thought experiments can produce such a radical shift in intuitions about the nature of consciousness, then our intuitions about subjective experience cannot possibly be trusted to reflect what consciousness really is like. This means our intuitions about consciousness likely emerge from within—from psychological biases.

Our intuitions about consciousness are shaped by two competing psychological biases: intuitive dualism and essentialism.

A large body of literature suggests that people—adults and young children, across various societies and cultures—consider the mind distinct from the body. For intuitive dualists, philosophical zombies don’t seem so strange. Since dualists see the mind as ethereal, distinct from the body, they can readily imagine a creature that shares only our body, but not the inner light of conscious experience. From the outside, the creature seems just like any real person; but on the inside, there’s nobody home. They’re as conscious as a rock.

Had our intuitions about consciousness stemmed only from intuitive dualism, then consciousness should have always seemed ethereal, just as the case of zombies suggests. But psychological biases, such as intuitive dualism, do not operate in a vacuum; they often interact with conflicting biases. And when these interactions occur, a bias that was previously silent can suddenly become dominant. Critically, the “push and pull” dynamics between them can also be shaped by context. When context shifts—when people consider different thought experiments about consciousness—the role of dualism may be weakened. Consequently, intuitions about the link between consciousness and the brain shift, too.

Mary’s case invokes just that shift in intuitions. What’s different about Mary’s case (relative to zombies) is that it invites us to evaluate a change to Mary herself (her new experience with color), and as a result, we now focus on her body, more than her mind. This attenuates the effect of intuitive dualism and brings a second competing constraint into the forefront—intuitive essentialism.

Essentialism is the intuitive belief that living things are what they are because they possess some innate, immutable essence that lies within their bodies. Research has shown that when people evaluate a change to a protagonist, they assess whether the change pertains to the protagonist’s essence. And since that essence seems to lie within the body, it is the body that determines the significance of that change.

For example, young children believe that a change to a dog’s insides (like removing its blood and bones) amounts to changing the kind of thing that it is, whereas external changes (like removing its fur) will not, presumably because it is within the “insides” that the animal’s hidden essence lies.

Like the dog example, Mary’s case also features a change. So for an intuitive essentialist, Mary’s newly gained consciousness of the redness of the color red ought to be significant or transformative only if this change pertains to her bodily essence. It follows that, to engender a significant change, a new conscious experience must affect Mary’s body. Seeing color fits the bill, because “seeing” intuitively feels like an embodied affair that involves the eyes. Accordingly, participants viewed Mary’s conscious experience as “transformative.”

Moreover, seeing color is significant precisely because intuitively, this experience seems physically embodied. The results also showed that the more “embodied” Mary’s experience seemed, the more transformative it was. This link between “embodiment” and “transformativeness” is exactly what intuitive essentialism predicts.

Together, intuitive dualism and essentialism can both capture our conscious intuitions. The crucial point, however, isn’t just why and how consciousness intuitions shift. Rather, it is the fact a shift occurs that is critical. And since it does, you know you could be in trouble—your intuitions could well arise from your internal psychological biases. So, resist the temptation and do not blindly follow their delusional voice. Don’t trust your consciousness to tell you what consciousness really is.

Iris Berent is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and the author of The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason About Human Nature.

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Is Matter Conscious?

Why the central problem in neuroscience is mirrored in physics.

By Hedda Hassel Mørch

The nature of consciousness seems to be unique among scientific puzzles. Not only do neuroscientists have no fundamental explanation for how it arises from physical states of the brain, we are not even sure whether we ever will. Astronomers wonder what dark matter is, geologists seek the origins of life, and biologists try to understand cancer—all difficult problems, of course, yet at least we have some idea of how to go about investigating them and rough conceptions of what their solutions could look like. Our first-person experience, on the other hand, lies beyond the traditional methods of science. Following the philosopher David Chalmers, we call it the hard problem of consciousness.

But perhaps consciousness is not uniquely troublesome. Going back to Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, philosophers of science have struggled with a lesser known, but equally hard, problem of matter. What is physical matter in and of itself, behind the mathematical structure described by physics? This problem, too, seems to lie beyond the traditional methods of science, because all we can observe is what matter does, not what it is in itself—the “software” of the universe but not its ultimate “hardware.” On the surface, these problems seem entirely separate. But a closer look reveals that they might be deeply connected.

Consciousness is a multifaceted phenomenon, but subjective experience is its most puzzling aspect. Our brains do not merely seem to gather and process information. They do not merely undergo biochemical processes. Rather, they create a vivid series of feelings and experiences, such as seeing red, feeling hungry, or being baffled about philosophy. There is something that it’s like to be you, and no one else can ever know that as directly as you do.

Our own consciousness involves a complex array of sensations, emotions, desires, and thoughts. But, in principle, conscious experiences may be very simple. An animal that feels an immediate pain or an instinctive urge or desire, even without reflecting on it, would also be conscious. Our own consciousness is also usually consciousness of something—it involves awareness or contemplation of things in the world, abstract ideas, or the self. But someone who is dreaming an incoherent dream or hallucinating wildly would still be conscious in the sense of having some kind of subjective experience, even though they are not conscious of anything in particular.

Philosophers and neuroscientists often assume that consciousness is like software, whereas the brain is like hardware.

Where does consciousness—in this most general sense—come from? Modern science has given us good reason to believe that our consciousness is rooted in the physics and chemistry of the brain, as opposed to anything immaterial or transcendental. In order to get a conscious system, all we need is physical matter. Put it together in the right way, as in the brain, and consciousness will appear. But how and why can consciousness result merely from putting together non-conscious matter in certain complex ways?

This problem is distinctively hard because its solution cannot be determined by means of experiment and observation alone. Through increasingly sophisticated experiments and advanced neuroimaging technology, neuroscience is giving us better and better maps of what kinds of conscious experiences depend on what kinds of physical brain states. Neuroscience might also eventually be able to tell us what all of our conscious brain states have in common: for example, that they have high levels of integrated information (per Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory), that they broadcast a message in the brain (per Bernard Baars’ Global Workspace Theory), or that they generate 40-hertz oscillations (per an early proposal by Francis Crick and Christof Koch). But in all these theories, the hard problem remains. How and why does a system that integrates information, broadcasts a message, or oscillates at 40 hertz feel pain or delight? The appearance of consciousness from mere physical complexity seems equally mysterious no matter what precise form the complexity takes.

Nor would it seem to help to discover the concrete biochemical, and ultimately physical, details that underlie this complexity. No matter how precisely we could specify the mechanisms underlying, for example, the perception and recognition of tomatoes, we could still ask: Why is this process accompanied by the subjective experience of red, or any experience at all? Why couldn’t we have just the physical process, but no consciousness?

Other natural phenomena, from dark matter to life, as puzzling as they may be, don’t seem nearly as intractable. In principle, we can see that understanding them is fundamentally a matter of gathering more physical detail: building better telescopes and other instruments, designing better experiments, or noticing new laws and patterns in the data we already have. If we were somehow granted knowledge of every physical detail and pattern in the universe, we would not expect these problems to persist. They would dissolve in the same way the problem of heritability dissolved upon the discovery of the physical details of DNA. But the hard problem of consciousness would seem to persist even given knowledge of every imaginable kind of physical detail.

In this way, the deep nature of consciousness appears to lie beyond scientific reach. We take it for granted, however, that physics can in principle tell us everything there is to know about the nature of physical matter. Physics tells us that matter is made of particles and fields, which have properties such as mass, charge, and spin. Physics may not yet have discovered all the fundamental properties of matter, but it is getting closer.

Yet there is reason to believe that there must be more to matter than what physics tells us. Broadly speaking, physics tells us what fundamental particles do or how they relate to other things, but nothing about how they are in themselves, independently of other things.

Charge, for example, is the property of repelling other particles with the same charge and attracting particles with the opposite charge. In other words, charge is a way of relating to other particles. Similarly, mass is the property of responding to applied forces and of gravitationally attracting other particles with mass, which might in turn be described as curving spacetime or interacting with the Higgs field. These are also things that particles do or ways of relating to other particles and to spacetime.

Conscious experiences are just the kind of things that physical structure could be the structure of.

In general, it seems all fundamental physical properties can be described mathematically. Galileo, the father of modern science, famously professed that the great book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. Yet mathematics is a language with distinct limitations. It can only describe abstract structures and relations. For example, all we know about numbers is how they relate to the other numbers and other mathematical objects—that is, what they “do,” the rules they follow when added, multiplied, and so on. Similarly, all we know about a geometrical object such as a node in a graph is its relations to other nodes. In the same way, a purely mathematical physics can tell us only about the relations between physical entities or the rules that govern their behavior.

One might wonder how physical particles are, independently of what they do or how they relate to other things. What are physical things like in themselves, or intrinsically? Some have argued that there is nothing more to particles than their relations, but intuition rebels at this claim. For there to be a relation, there must be two things being related. Otherwise, the relation is empty—a show that goes on without performers, or a castle constructed out of thin air. In other words, physical structure must be realized or implemented by some stuff or substance that is itself not purely structural. Otherwise, there would be no clear difference between physical and mere mathematical structure, or between the concrete universe and a mere abstraction. But what could this stuff that realizes or implements physical structure be, and what are the intrinsic, non-structural properties that characterize it? This problem is a close descendant of Kant’s classic problem of knowledge of things-in-themselves. The philosopher Galen Strawson has called it the hard problem of matter.

It is ironic, because we usually think of physics as describing the hardware of the universe—the real, concrete stuff. But in fact physical matter (at least the aspect that physics tells us about) is more like software: a logical and mathematical structure. According to the hard problem of matter, this software needs some hardware to implement it. Physicists have brilliantly reverse-engineered the algorithms—or the source code—of the universe, but left out their concrete implementation.

The hard problem of matter is distinct from other problems of interpretation in physics. Current physics presents puzzles, such as: How can matter be both particle-like and wave-like? What is quantum wavefunction collapse? Are continuous fields or discrete individuals more fundamental? But these are all questions of how to properly conceive of the structure of reality. The hard problem of matter would arise even if we had answers to all such questions about structure. No matter what structure we are talking about, from the most bizarre and unusual to the perfectly intuitive, there will be a question of how it is non-structurally implemented.

Indeed, the problem arises even for Newtonian physics, which describes the structure of reality in a way that makes perfect intuitive sense. Roughly speaking, Newtonian physics says that matter consists of solid particles that interact either by bumping into each other or by gravitationally attracting each other. But what is the intrinsic nature of the stuff that behaves in this simple and intuitive way? What is the hardware that implements the software of Newton’s equations? One might think the answer is simple: It is implemented by solid particles. But solidity is just the behavior of resisting intrusion and spatial overlap by other particles—that is, another mere relation to other particles and space. The hard problem of matter arises for any structural description of reality no matter how clear and intuitive at the structural level.

Like the hard problem of consciousness, the hard problem of matter cannot be solved by experiment and observation or by gathering more physical detail. This will only reveal more structure, at least as long as physics remains a discipline dedicated to capturing reality in mathematical terms.

Might the hard problem of consciousness and the hard problem of matter be connected? There is already a tradition for connecting problems in physics with the problem of consciousness, namely in the area of quantum theories of consciousness. Such theories are sometimes disparaged as fallaciously inferring that because quantum physics and consciousness are both mysterious, together they will somehow be less so. The idea of a connection between the hard problem of consciousness and the hard problem of matter could be criticized on the same grounds. Yet a closer look reveals that these two problems are complementary in a much deeper and more determinate way. One of the first philosophers to notice the connection was Leibniz all the way back in the late 17th century, but the precise modern version of the idea is due to Bertrand Russell. Recently, contemporary philosophers including Chalmers and Strawson have rediscovered it. It goes like this.

The hard problem of matter calls for non-structural properties, and consciousness is the one phenomenon we know that might meet this need. Consciousness is full of qualitative properties, from the redness of red and the discomfort of hunger to the phenomenology of thought. Such experiences, or “qualia,” may have internal structure, but there is more to them than structure. We know something about what conscious experiences are like in and of themselves, not just how they function and relate to other properties.

For example, think of someone who has never seen any red objects and has never been told that the color red exists. That person knows nothing about how redness relates to brain states, to physical objects such as tomatoes, or to wavelengths of light, nor how it relates to other colors (for example, that it’s similar to orange but very different from green). One day, the person spontaneously hallucinates a big red patch. It seems this person will thereby learn what redness is like, even though he or she doesn’t know any of its relations to other things. The knowledge he or she acquires will be non-relational knowledge of what redness is like in and of itself.

This suggests that consciousness—of some primitive and rudimentary form—is the hardware that the software described by physics runs on. The physical world can be conceived of as a structure of conscious experiences. Our own richly textured experiences implement the physical relations that make up our brains. Some simple, elementary forms of experiences implement the relations that make up fundamental particles. Take an electron, for example. What an electron does is to attract, repel, and otherwise relate to other entities in accordance with fundamental physical equations. What performs this behavior, we might think, is simply a stream of tiny electron experiences. Electrons and other particles can be thought of as mental beings with physical powers; as streams of experience in physical relations to other streams of experience.

This idea sounds strange, even mystical, but it comes out of a careful line of thought about the limitations of science. Leibniz and Russell were determined scientific rationalists—as evidenced by their own immortal contributions to physics, logic, and mathematics—but equally deeply committed to the reality and uniqueness of consciousness. They concluded that in order to give both phenomena their proper due, a radical change of thinking is required.

And a radical change it truly is. Philosophers and neuroscientists often assume that consciousness is like software, whereas the brain is like hardware. This suggestion turns this completely around. When we look at what physics tells us about the brain, we actually just find software—purely a set of relations—all the way down. And consciousness is in fact more like hardware, because of its distinctly qualitative, non-structural properties. For this reason, conscious experiences are just the kind of things that physical structure could be the structure of.

Given this solution to the hard problem of matter, the hard problem of consciousness all but dissolves. There is no longer any question of how consciousness arises from non-conscious matter, because all matter is intrinsically conscious. There is no longer a question of how consciousness depends on matter, because it is matter that depends on consciousness—as relations depend on relata, structure depends on realizer, or software on hardware.

One might object that this is plain anthropomorphism, an illegitimate projection of human qualities on nature. After all, why do we think that physical structure needs some intrinsic realizer? Is it not because our own brains have intrinsic, conscious properties, and we like to think of nature in familiar terms? But this objection does not hold. The idea that intrinsic properties are needed to distinguish real and concrete from mere abstract structure is entirely independent of consciousness. Moreover, the charge of anthropomorphism can be met by a countercharge of human exceptionalism. If the brain is indeed entirely material, why should it be so different from the rest of matter when it comes to intrinsic properties?

This view, that consciousness constitutes the intrinsic aspect of physical reality, goes by many different names, but one of the most descriptive is “dual-aspect monism.” Monism contrasts with dualism, the view that consciousness and matter are fundamentally different substances or kinds of stuff. Dualism is widely regarded as scientifically implausible, because science shows no evidence of any non-physical forces that influence the brain.

Monism holds that all of reality is made of the same kind of stuff. It comes in several varieties. The most common monistic view is physicalism (also known as materialism), the view that everything is made of physical stuff, which only has one aspect, the one revealed by physics. This is the predominant view among philosophers and scientists today. According to physicalism, a complete, purely physical description of reality leaves nothing out. But according to the hard problem of consciousness, any purely physical description of a conscious system such as the brain at least appears to leave something out: It could never fully capture what it is like to be that system. That is to say, it captures the objective but not the subjective aspects of consciousness: the brain function, but not our inner mental life.

In order to give both phenomena their proper due, a radical change of thinking is required.

Russell’s dual-aspect monism tries to fill in this deficiency. It accepts that the brain is a material system that behaves in accordance with the laws of physics. But it adds another, intrinsic aspect to matter which is hidden from the extrinsic, third-person perspective of physics and which therefore cannot be captured by any purely physical description. But although this intrinsic aspect eludes our physical theories, it does not elude our inner observations. Our own consciousness constitutes the intrinsic aspect of the brain, and this is our clue to the intrinsic aspect of other physical things. To paraphrase Arthur Schopenhauer’s succinct response to Kant: We can know the thing-in-itself because we are it.

Dual-aspect monism comes in moderate and radical forms. Moderate versions take the intrinsic aspect of matter to consist of so-called protoconscious or “neutral” properties: properties that are unknown to science, but also different from consciousness. The nature of such neither-mental-nor-physical properties seems quite mysterious. Like the aforementioned quantum theories of consciousness, moderate dual-aspect monism can therefore be accused of merely adding one mystery to another and expecting them to cancel out.

The most radical version of dual-aspect monism takes the intrinsic aspect of reality to consist of consciousness itself. This is decidedly not the same as subjective idealism, the view that the physical world is merely a structure within human consciousness, and that the external world is in some sense an illusion. According to dual-aspect monism, the external world exists entirely independently of human consciousness. But it would not exist independently of any kind of consciousness, because all physical things are associated with some form of consciousness of their own, as their own intrinsic realizer, or hardware.

As a solution to the hard problem of consciousness, dual-aspect monism faces objections of its own. The most common objection is that it results in panpsychism, the view that all things are associated with some form of consciousness. To critics, it’s just too implausible that fundamental particles are conscious. And indeed this idea takes some getting used to. But consider the alternatives. Dualism looks implausible on scientific grounds. Physicalism takes the objective, scientifically accessible aspect of reality to be the only reality, which arguably implies that the subjective aspect of consciousness is an illusion. Maybe so—but shouldn’t we be more confident that we are conscious, in the full subjective sense, than that particles are not?

A second important objection is the so-called combination problem. How and why does the complex, unified consciousness of our brains result from putting together particles with simple consciousness? This question looks suspiciously similar to the original hard problem. I and other defenders of panpsychism have argued that the combination problem is nevertheless not as hard as the original hard problem. In some ways, it is easier to see how to get one form of conscious matter (such as a conscious brain) from another form of conscious matter (such as a set of conscious particles) than how to get conscious matter from non-conscious matter. But many find this unconvincing. Perhaps it is just a matter of time, though. The original hard problem, in one form or another, has been pondered by philosophers for centuries. The combination problem has received much less attention, which gives more hope for a yet undiscovered solution.

The possibility that consciousness is the real concrete stuff of reality, the fundamental hardware that implements the software of our physical theories, is a radical idea. It completely inverts our ordinary picture of reality in a way that can be difficult to fully grasp. But it may solve two of the hardest problems in science and philosophy at once.

Hedda Hassel Mørch is a Norwegian philosopher and postdoctoral researcher hosted by the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at NYU. She works on the combination problem and other topics related to dual-aspect monism and panpsychism.