I bought a rare book in an indie bookshop in Georgetown. That’s a misleading statement; I don’t mean an antique. I mean, the subject matter of this book is rare, not because it’s old, but because it’s modern, cutting-edge. It’s a book about consciousness that approaches the subject from neuroscientific and mystical perspectives. That’s rare—most books are about either neuroscience or mysticism, not both, if they even have the temerity to approach the topic of consciousness at all. In this article, I’ll share what this rare find has to say about dual-aspect monism, the mind-body problem, a simple coin, and your brain.

A Book About Dual-Aspect Monism, the Mind-Body Problem, and Consciousness

The book is called Dreaming Reality, by Vladimir Miskovic and Steven Jay Lynn. Its authorship is dual, just like its subject matter. It was published in 2025 by Harvard University Press.

What Is Dual-Aspect Monism, and What Does It Have to Do with the Mind-Body Problem?

Dual-aspect monism is a relatively new theory that offers a possible solution to the mind-body problem.

Back in the seventeenth century, René Descartes advocated for mind-body dualism: The mind was heavenly, while the body was earthly. Dualism means two different kinds of “stuff.” As neuroscientists have learned more, the mind part of dualism has gotten smaller in scope (i.e., it’s not the entire brain, for the brain is part of the body). However, the dualistic theory is still very much around. Dualism means humans and conscious beings have physical brains but also something else.

More recently, a philosophy known as materialism arose, which says there’s no exterior mind or consciousness, other than what’s in the physical body and brain. This is monism: there’s only one kind of “stuff.”

Dual-aspect monism is monism: There’s only one kind of “stuff.” However, this “stuff” can be looked at in two ways, hence it has a “dual aspect.” The brain, proponents of dual-aspect monism say, is like a coin with two faces. There’s only one thing, but it can be looked at from one side or the other.

The two sides of dual-aspect monism are the objective, which can be understood through neuroscience, and the subjective, which can be understood through mysticism and meditation.

Miskovic and Lynn say they are advocates of the dual-aspect monism theory, while admitting that “what constitutes this underlying ‘ground of being,’ out of which both matter and mind originate, . . . remains a deep and abiding mystery.”

I’m not going to take a personal stand on the mind-body problem in this blog post. But I will take a stand on the book Dreaming Reality: It’s a fascinating read, because it peers into the brain both objectively and subjectively and attempts to link up the two sides of the coin.

Dual-Aspect Monism: the Neuroscientific Side of the Coin

I’ll give you an example of the two different sides of the dual-aspect monism coin. Let’s start with the neuroscientific side. Neuroscientists have found that the brain is not like a machine that takes an input and spits out a precise output. Your brain is working all the time, whether you’re awake or asleep or in some other state, and very little of this work has anything to do with inputs. Most of it seems to be daydreaming or actual dreaming. The authors write:

“The brain spends about twenty times more resources on maintaining its ongoing monologue than on responding to specific task-based demands. It is far from the case that this spontaneous churn of neural activities is swamped by the introduction of outside stimuli. To the contrary, phenomena like the conscious perception of the objects around you consume a meager 5 percent of your neural energy budget. . . . Whatever role is played by that silent majority of neuronal activity, ceaselessly operating in the background, it is the bulk of what brains actually do.”

This is what brain tests have shown. One neuroscientist compared this “spontaneous churn of neural activities” to the dark energy of the universe: There’s a whole bunch of activity in the brain that no one anticipated before the advent of neuroscience.

That’s the objective side of the coin.

Dual-Aspect Monism: the Mystical Side of the Coin

Let’s move on to the subjective side of the coin. What happens when mystics and expert meditators examine the brain from the inside? Do they notice anything that might relate to the non-input-related “spontaneous churn of neural activities”?

Indeed, they have. Anyone who’s tried to meditate even once knows that the mind is constantly racing with thoughts. It’s almost impossible to turn it off at will, for any length of time. But some people succeed in gaining this ability.

The authors write about “an individual who, after forty years of dedicated Buddhist practice and over twenty thousand hours of meditation practice, could flexibly dissolve his sense of perceived boundaries between self and world. . . . His DMN [i.e., default-mode network, which is what neuroscientists call the daydreaming part of the mind] had become chronically underactive relative to that of individuals with less extensive training.”

Whoa! So it’s possible to turn off the “spontaneous churn of neural activities” that consumes so much of the brain’s energy. Remarkably, turning this off somehow relates to a feeling that you have lost your sense of a unique self: your self has merged seamlessly into the universe, and you and the universe are one.

What Conclusions Can We Draw from the Two Sides of the Coin of Dual-Aspect Monism?

I think we need to be careful here, and the authors are careful as well. They don’t draw any grand conclusions about the example I chose above, other than they think it’s fascinating to look at the brain from two perspectives and compare the two. They also think this approach is the right way to go about investigations of the brain. However, they don’t claim to solve all the mysteries of consciousness or the universe.

If you’re interested in consciousness, dreaming, psychedelics, neuroscience, Buddhist and Christian mystics, and meditation, this book is a difficult but readable choice for your bedside table.

Do you have thoughts on consciousness and the mind-body problem?

Featured in this post: Dreaming Reality by Vladimir Miskovic and Steven Jay Lynn Buy it now