What is matter anyways?--from organisms to cells to proteins to molecules to atoms to electrons to light? The most famous equation in modern physics is Einstein's E=MC2 which if we pause for a second is as mysterious as anything written in our ancient religious scriptures and measurably more radical. My point is that the resistance we have to reductionists who say, we are “just matter” is because we tend to think of matter as flat. It is, of course, anything but. Thus maybe the reason we opt for dualism or the idea that something must be “beyond” matter is because we haven't come to grips to the amazing plasticity and mystery inherent in matter itself.
In other words, we are using an extremely outdated and misleading definition of matter and in so doing losing sight of the wonderfulness of what physics and neuroscience is saying. We are not lessened because we are just matter, just as we wouldn't be lessened in Sach Khand if we were made of just “light.”