Self and Consciousness in Buddhism and Neuroscience

Jabez Zinabu

PHRE 311

May 4, 2015

The author of Waking, Dreaming, Being, Evan Thompson, is a philosopher who

works in the fields of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, Phenomenology, and cross-

cultural philosophy, focusing heavily on Asian philosophy and contemporary Buddhist

philosophy in dialogue with Western philosophy and science. Currently he is a professor

of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He’s the author of

Colour Vision, The Embodied Mind, Mind in Life, and the subject of my research:

Waking, Dreaming, Being. The main purpose of Thompson’s research in Waking,

Dreaming, Being is to combine the latest neuroscience discovery with Eastern Buddhist

and Vedic philosophy to show the correlation of the self and the brain. He does a great

job connecting relevant experiments, and drawing on not only scientific data, but early

Buddhist texts to support his thesis. Thompson did well in making it so that each

individual chapter brings to light a new but relevant case to his argument.

There were times where some of the scientific content used didn’t give a clear

hypothesis, but besides a couple of those instances, the scientific content correlated well with the

points he was making. Each chapter sets out to explore consciousness which began with a

question he heard from the Dalai Lama: “Is consciousness wholly dependent on the brain or does

consciousness transcend the brain?”i Using the strong and applicable discoveries from

neuroscience, philosophy, religion, and personal narratives, Thompson studies consciousness and

the sense of self across waking, dreaming, and deep-sleep states, as well as meditative states of

heightened awareness and concentration.

He reminds us of the 3,000 years of Buddhist study in the field of cognitive

function, long before the studies conducted of early philosophers like Socrates. His

sections are broken up into “waking”, “dreaming”, and “being”. In “waking”, he explores

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the cognitive functions in a daily waking state. In “dreaming” he explores the cognitive

functions in a dream state, rejecting the commonly held scientific view of dreams simply

as hallucinations in the brain. In the “being” section, he explores the Buddhist/Vedic

traditions commitment to the idea of consciousness as a function independent of the

brain, using discussions of death, and near death experience to illustrate. In the early

sections, he describes the origins of consciousness study. The Debates of consciousness

actually began before Socrates’s interrogations and Plato’s Dialogues, in Videha or what

is now northeast Nepal. King Janaka, the leader of the Janaka Dynasty in 7th c BCE

Videha, asks the great sage Yajnavalkya- one of the very first philosophers in recorded

history, about the nature of consciousness, in which the dialogue following was recorded

in the “great forest teaching (brhadaranyaka Upanishad)” a text of the ancient Indian

scriptures called the Upanishads.

After answers ranging from the sun to fire, he asks about the self, for which the

sage answers “it is the inner light that is the person, consisting of knowledge, residing in

the heart, surrounded by the vital breath.”ii As the answer unfolds it becomes clear the

light he speaks of is what we call “consciousness”. “Consciousness is like a light, it

illuminates or reveals things, so they can be known” says the sage, “In the waking state,

consciousness illuminates the outer world; in dreams it illuminates the dream world.”iii

This conversation with Yajnavalkya and the king, is the first map of consciousness in

written history. Several questions were raised by Thompson in what followed about

consciousness presence or lack thereof in different states. If deep sleep is peaceful and

blissful, does this mean we’re somehow conscious in deep sleep? Is awareness present, or

is deep sleep the oblivion of awareness? Put another way, is deep sleep a state of

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consciousness, like waking and dreaming, or is it a state where consciousness is absent,

like most neuroscientists think today?

Well, Yajnavalkya’s description of deep and dreamless sleep, like many later

Indian interpretations, implies consciousness pervades deep sleep. Passage: “Though then

he does not see, yet seeing he does not see. There is no cutting off of the seeing of the

seer, because it is imperishable. But there is no second, no other, separate from himself

that he might see.”iv This can roughly be translated as although there are no longer any

dream images to be seen, there remains a sort of awareness in dreamless sleep. “As the

sun cannot stop shining, so the self cannot lose all consciousness.”v More specifically, it

cannot lose the basic luminosity of awareness (“there is no cutting off of the seeing of the

seer”). Later philosophers of the Yoga and Vedanta schools would also offer the

following argument in support of the idea that consciousness continues in deep sleep: “if

there were no awareness at all in deep and dreamless sleep, then you couldn’t have the

memory, “I slept well,” immediately upon waking up.” Memory is the recollection of

past experience; when you remember something, you recall an earlier experience and you

recall it as your own. In remembering you slept peacefully, you recall something from

deep sleep, so that state must have been a subtly conscious one.

Thompson made sure to make an important distinction between western cognitive science

and the Indian yogic philosophies. Cognitive science focuses on the contrast between the

presence and absence of consciousness. For example, between being awake and being in deep

sleep, in the case of deep sleep, you are not able to report seeing anything, even though you show

signs of brain response in its presence. The Indian yogic traditions, focus on the contrast between

gross and subtle consciousness. For example, between waking perception of outer material

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objects, and subliminal awareness in deep sleep. Gross consciousness is waking sense

perception, which tells you about things outside you, and gives you the feeling of your body

from within. Dreaming is more subtle since you withdraw from the outside world and create

what you see and feel from your imagination and memories. Deep sleep is yet more subtle, since

it’s consciousness without mental images (Indian yogic traditions thought), this sort of subtle

consciousness is also said to be the same in certain states of deep meditation, where overt

thinking and perceiving cease. This sort of deep consciousness in meditation isn’t apparent in the

untrained mind, it takes a high level of meditative awareness to be recognized. Older way of

thinking originating in Vedic thought of ancient India 1500 BCE, vs. newer thought of

Upanishads 700-400 BCE.

Old: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep are locations where the “inner

person” travels. When you fall asleep, you go to the place of dreams,

which lies between this world and the world beyond it. After that, you go

to a place of no dreams, a place of dreamless sleep

New: locations of the “inner person” transform into states of

consciousness. This concept started with the Mandukya Upanishad,

presenting the famous doctrine of the four states of consciousness-waking,

dreaming, deep/dreamless sleep, and pure awareness.

The Mandukya Upanishad describe the four states as four “feet” of the self

(atman). The first state is the waking state, where consciousness looks outward and

experiences the body as the self, it’s a restless state, always on the move. The second

state of atman is the dream state, where consciousness turns inward and experiences the

dream ego as the self. Like waking, it’s a restless state. This state enjoys dream images,

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created from subtle mental impressions from memory and imagination. The third state of

atman is the state of deep or dreamless sleep. Here desires disappear, and the restless

mind calms. The self rests in a “single mass” of peaceful consciousness. The fourth state

of the self (atman) is the pure awareness beneath or behind waking, dreaming, and deep

sleep, not conditioned by these changing states. They describe it as without turning

inward, not turning outward, not turned both ways, not a mass of consciousness, not

conscious or unconscious. It’s considered unseen, inviolable, unseizable, signless, and

unthinkable. Its essence resting in the one self, peaceful, gracious, without duality. In

other words, “the fourth” (turiya) state is pure nondual awareness. Unlike the other 3

states, it isn’t a sense of condition, instead it’s the constant, underlying source for the

changing states, as well as a stage of meditative realization. As the underlying source for

the other three states, the fourth is sheer awareness. As a stage of meditative realization,

it’s the deeper, background awareness that can witness these changing states without

identifying with them as the self. The fourth state is the supreme wakefulness that reveals

the true self, as the witness of the other states, it is said to bring true freedom, serenity

and bliss.

The Mandukya Upanishad links the four states of consciousness to the sacred

Vedic syllable or mantra OM (or AUM). The text identifies OM with all that there has

been, is, and will be, as well as anything beyond these three times. OM is the sound of

Brahman (or highest reality) the nondual source of of the phenomenal universe that’s also

identical to the transcendent self-atman.

A expresses the waking state.

Its rough sound produced with the mouth open

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U expresses the dream state

It’s a subtle sound produced with the aid of the lips

M expresses the deep-sleep state

Still more refined, its voiced with closed lips

Sounded inside the throat, “mmmm” vocalizes the blissful and dreamless

consciousness of deep sleep.

“The fourth”, however is unique in that it has no sound.

It can be thought of as the silence from which all sounds emerge,

or the unity of the three phonemes, on the one syllable OM,

expressing the unity of the three states of the one nondual

awareness

In the Sutras or recorded saying of the Buddha, preserved in the Pali Canon, the Buddha

repeatedly states that “consciousness is contingent or dependent on conditions”, and he rejects

the Upanishadic view that one and the same consciousness lies behind the changing mental states

and changing bodily states that make up a person. He says, “Consciousness is reckoned by the

particular condition dependent upon which it arises. When consciousness arises dependent on the

eye and forms, it is reckoned as eye consciousness, when consciousness arises dependent on the

ear and sounds, it is reckoned as ear consciousness. Consciousness is reckoned by the particular

condition dependent on which it arises.” viFrom experiments led by Diego Corelli, questions

began to arise about whether consciousness was a continuous flow, or rather discrete, like frames

of a movie or series of pictures. It certainly doesn’t appear to be chopped into bits as the studies

of Corelli suggest. In 1890, William James wrote a metaphor of the stream of consciousness into

western psychology. The same image was figured into the Buddhist philosophical tradition

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known as the Abhidharma over a thousand years ago. “In addition to what may be roughly

described as ontology, epistemology, and logic, the Tibetans also inherited and further developed

the Buddhist Abhidharma system of thought.”vii The Buddha said: “the river never stops: there is

no moment, no minute, no hour, when the river stops: in the same way, the flux of thought”.

Both the Abhidharma and James describe the states of consciousness as not

discrete in isolation, but rather rising in dependence on the previous and succeeding ones,

forming a stream of mental continuum. James and the Abhidharma do have different

ideas of the nature of the mental stream. James describes the stream as always changing,

but our perception of the stream is as smooth and continuous, even in large gaps like

waking from a deep sleep. The Abhidharma agree that the stream is always changing, but

they argue that it appears to continuously flow only to an untrained observer. The

Abhidharma view of the minds workings is built on the basic Buddhist idea that each

moment of awareness arises dependent on a number of physical and mental processes,

which condition the arising of the next moment of awareness. What we call the “mind” is

a stream of momentary mental events, for which each can be analyzed into a number of

basic constituents. Each momentary mental event consist of a primary “awareness”, along

with various ‘mental factors’, The primary awareness belongs to one of the six types of

awareness-visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and mental awareness.

The Abhidharma philosophers agree with Western phenomenologist like Edmund

Husserl, that all consciousness is consciousness in something. Phenomenologists call this

“intentionality”. Both western phenomenologists and Abhidharma philosophers agree

that intentionality, directed at an object, belongs to the nature of consciousness, instead of

something getting added to that consciousness from the outside. The Abhidharma maps

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of the mind list more than fifty mental factors, group the factors into subcategories, and

specifies them. The mental factors conditioning awareness are categorized according to

whether they are positive, negative, or neutral. The categories differ between the

Abhidharma schools, but there are five general mental factors agreed upon: contact,

feeling, perception, intention, and attention:

Contact: consists in a three way relationship between a mental object, the

corresponding mental faculty, and the consciousness dependent on the two

elements

Feeling: with mental contact, there occurs a basic affective feeling tone,

on the basis of which consciousness evaluates its object

Perception: the mental factor that plays the role of discerning the

consciousness

Intention: the mental factor responsible for the goal directed function of

consciousness

Attention: the mental factor that enables consciousness to orient toward its

object, and to target and refer to it, it guides the other mental factors to the

object of the primary awareness.

The Abhidharma states that “there is no consciousness of a mental object, without

the mental orientation and reference that attention allows.”viii The Abhidharma also

distinguishes attention from other factors that also focus consciousness on its object, but

aren’t present in all the mental states, mindfulness and concentration for example.

Concentration differs from attention in that no only attending to some object, but keeping

that attention over time. In a similar way, mindfulness not only attends to an object, but it

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keeps the object in awareness from moment to moment, and brings it back to the mind

when it starts to fade away. These distinctions allow the understanding of moments of

consciousness as discrete structured events in cognition, rather than continuous events.

The Abhidharma states that “each of the momentary cognitive events arises and passes

away in rapid succession.” Our waking cognition of the world is thus discrete instead of a

seamless flow.

This idea has been mirrored by early modern philosophers, like David Hume,

whose bundle theory argues against the idea of self, claiming the idea of self or

consciousness is not a continuous experience, but rather the combination of events so

closely related, they are mistakenly packed together as a single continuous experience.

Hume suggests that we are a “bundle” of perceptions and events that are all changing

constantly, and these changes are so subtle and closely related we think of them as a

single experience when in fact they are not. He says “The action of the imagination by

which we consider the uninterrupted and invariable object and that by which we reflect

on the succession of related objects are almost the same to the feeling, nor is there much

more effort of thought required in the latter case than in the former. The relation

facilitates the transition of the mind from one object to another and renders its passage as

smooth as if it contemplated one continued object.”ix

His claim is that since the identity and the diversity of our thoughts are so close to

each other, they actually effect our views of identity, and confuse the diverse objects in

mind which are constantly changing, as one continuous object, or experience, that is not

changing, when in reality, by Hume’s argument, those objects or events are actually

closely related, separate objects that are perceived as a continuous experience. He says

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we are so prone to make this mistake, that we continue to fall into the idea that we are

experiencing a single identity, over time, but we are truly but a bundle of objects and

perceptions, that are so closely related, that we mistake them all to be a part of one

continuous experience. Hume’s bundle theory supports the statement in the Abhidharma

about the momentary cognitive events rising and passing in rapid succession. 2000 years

later, and the Abhidharma ideas still relate closely to the modern philosophers discoveries

and theories, a testament to the innovative thinking of the early Indian philosophy, which

Evan Thompson points out many times in saying “modern science still has ways to go to

catch up to the thinking of Indian philosophers 3000 years prior.

Modern visual science offers a similar description, “Although it seems as if we’re

seeing many things at one time, our eyes are actually darting about quickly from one

thing to another and back again. Our impression of a seamless visual world doesn’t come

from taking in everything all at once or in a smooth progression; it comes from the rapid

way our eyes sample the scene and from knowing we can look anywhere we need to in

order to get more information.” Just like the Abhidharma’s description, this is similar to

the perception of a movie. Although it may seem as though the movie is moving in

continuous format, it is actually moving in high speed discrete frames. In the Dreaming

section, Thompson describes his account of a lucid dream when he was on a trip to India

meeting with the Dalai Lama and other western meditation researchers. Lucid dreaming,

although somewhat new to western scientific research, has been around (similar to

consciousness studies) long before the western science community took interest. Tibetan

dream yoga or svapnadarśana, is the original form of lucid dreaming. It is a philosophical

practice created in Tibetan Buddhism at least 1,000 years ago. Just like lucid dreams, the

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aim of this is to awaken the consciousness in the dream state. Within the Buddhist Tantric

tradition there is great emphasis on using the dream state of being for developmental

ends.

The practice called "dream yoga," which in the West has been presented as one of

the "Six Doctrines of Naropa.", is a high meditation practice which is performed by the

practitioner within the so-called lucid dream state. Thompson notes a possible reason for

the lack of research in western psychology on lucid dreaming could be in relation to the

lack of information regarding lucid dreaming in Sigmund Freud’s work- The

interpretation of Dreaming. “In a dream one observes a wide range of mental phenomena

which correspond to the five physical senses, and there is a clear sense that the thing

experiencing these events is not identical to the mental properties themselves.”x This is

more apparent in a lucid dream, that is, when the dreamer becomes aware that he or she is

dreaming. Skeptics question that if one reports a lucid dream, did they in fact gain

consciousness in the dream state and realize they were dreaming, or know that they were

dreaming, or did they dream that they had gained consciousness, and thus dreamt that

they were dreaming? The distinction being engaging in real lucid dreaming or dreaming

of lucid dreaming, a question that argues that lucid dreams may in fact be nothing but

dreams of lucid dreaming. Thompson raises two points to the challenge:

Dreaming that your dreaming, and knowing that your dreaming feel

different, producing different memories upon waking up

Second, there is now evidence supporting the theory of lucid dreaming-

physiological and brain imaging verifications of the lucid dream statexi

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The concept of self-awareness in dreaming refers to two separate instances. The first distinct

concept of dreaming self-awareness applies to “a state-dependent phenomenon, namely,

recognition of the dreaming state while dreaming. Specified this distinction between the

dreaming and waking state as dreaming with accurate self-awareness”xii

Studies of lucid dreaming have been undertaken by philosophers and psychiatrist

around the world, but the Tibetan Buddhist dream yoga practice’s description precedes

western studies, described in the following 17th century Tibetan text: “before you fall into

a deep, there are so called thoughts between falling asleep and dreaming. Before you

actually fall asleep and you are still in the process of falling asleep, thoughts arise and

sounds are faintly heard. You have a sense of the body’s becoming very torpid and a

sense of becoming pressed into darkness. You also have a sense of the experience of deep

breathing as you begin to relax. Right after that, there is a sensation of numbness at the

point midway between the eyes. At that time you will begin to feel vague impressions of

people, animals, environments, or whatever your recent mental impressions are. Thes

vague mental impressions are the cause for the dream. The dream you will have actually

arises as the result of those impressions. If you recognize this, it is your chance to

recognize the dream, like threading a needle right through the eye, and you will

immediately enter the dream and apprehend it.”

This account once again points out how slow modern western science has been to

adopting ideas that have been around for hundreds and thousands of years in eastern

philosophy. In the earlier section on consciousness, the main focus was on the yogic ideas

of consciousness, since it was them, not Buddhist, who had stronger arguments for the

state of consciousness in deep sleep. The sleep yoga idea of deep sleep lucidity is central

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to Tibetan Buddhist practices, which is said to be derived from the 8th century C.E.

Buddhist teacher Padmasambhava, who states “According to the Tibetan Buddhist sleep

yoga teachings, as we fall asleep our awareness withdraws from the five senses and the

sixth mental sense until we eventually go blank and fall into darkness. After some time,

which could be long or short, dreams arise. The state between the moment of falling

asleep and the arising of dreams is deep and dreamless sleep.” Lucid deep sleep, or “clear

light sleep” occurs when the body is sleeping, but one is not lost in the darkness or

dreams, but instead pure awareness, or the fourth state by yogic standards. It’s also

mentioned that the complete shutting down of sensory and mental functions at the

moment of falling asleep, together with pure awareness arriving before any dream arises,

is similar to what happens at death.

This is why sleep yoga is also used for working with the experience of death. “If the

self were the same as the conditions on which it depends, it would come to be and pass

away as they do; but if the self were different from the conditions on which it depends, it

could not have any of their characteristics.” This quote from Fundamental Stanzas on the

Middle Way by Nagarjuna describe the two extremes often thought about when

contemplating the idea of self, he however, looks at the self as a “middle way” between

the two extremes. Thompson ends the chapter on self with the question, is the self an

illusion? Rather than accepting or neglecting the idea of “no self”, he introduces the idea

of self-specifying and self-designating processes. Instead of looking at the self as a

specific thing, he describes it as a process. The Yogacara school of Indian Buddhism

holds a sophisticated view of no-self, which the idea that a stream of consciousness

mentally represents itself as belong to a self, but they say no such self exists in reality and

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is thus an illusion. “The Yogacara doctrine (found elsewhere, although less strongly, in

other schools of Buddhist philosophy) states that an external object does not exist

separately from the consciousness that perceives it, and that objects exist as designations

by human thought and language.”xiii

Their description of self is that of an ego or “I” that is consciously experiencing

moments and events that make up the stream of consciousness. Thompson describes this

illusion as a process where one part of the mental stream designates another part of the

stream as the self. But since no part of the stream or the stream itself aren’t the self, the

designation is wrong. Thompson explains the position of Candrakirti, a Tibetan

philosopher of the Prasangika Madhyamaka who presents a view that doesn’t conclude a

no self, but rather a self that is dependently arisen, Dependent for its existence on a basis

of designation, in which the designation basis is the five aggregates. So since the self-

arises as a mental projection onto he aggregates, it’s no different than the aggregates, or

does not exist independently of them. Thompson compares the self to an image on a

mirror. The image depends on the mirror for its existence-it is the basis for the image, but

the image isn’t the same exact thing as the mirror. So the self does appear as an illusion,

even if not concluding there is no self, the illusion exist in the idea that it is existing

independently.

While the support from the many experiments contribute to the findings in neuroscience,

the studies have yet to catch up to the thousands of years of mind studies done in eastern

philosophical studies. Time and time again, we see examples of “scientific discoveries” that

point in the same direction Buddhist and yogic monks have said for generations. I do feel the

work between the Dalai Lama and western scientists has contributed to the connections being

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discovered in the eastern and western views of consciousness, dreaming, and being. It should be

interesting to see the continued progress between the two sides, and how both science and

Buddhist philosophy will evolve with the collaboration of the two studies. Thompson’s

contributions in his research and book have brought such ideas and connections between

Buddhist philosophy and neuroscience to a mainstream/younger audience. Even with the amount

of research done in this field of “modern Buddhist cognitive science”, I believe we have just

scratched the surface of understanding.

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Notes

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i "Waking, Dreaming, And Being: Self And Consciousness In Neuroscience, Meditation, And Philosophy." Publishers Weekly 261.38 (2014): 64. Academic Search Elite. Web. 4 May 2015.ii Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Print.iii Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Print.iv Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Print.v Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Print.vi Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Print.vii Jinpa, Thupten. "Buddhism And Science: How Far Can The Dialogue Proceed?." Zygon: Journal Of Religion & Science 45.4 (2010): 871-882. Academic Search Elite. Web. 4 May 2015.viii Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Print.ix Hume, David, D. G. C. Macnabb, and Pall S. Ardal. A Treatise of Human Understanding: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. London: Collins, 1962. Print.x Wallace, B. Alan. Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge. New York, NY, USA: Columbia University Press, 2007. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 4 May 2015.xi Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Print.xii Kozmova, Miloslava, and Richard N. Wolman. "Self-Awareness In Dreaming." Dreaming 16.3 (2006): 196-214. PsycARTICLES. Web. 4 May 2015.xiii Lopez, Donald S.. Buddhism and Science : A Guide for the Perplexed. Chicago, IL, USA: University of Chicago Press, 2008. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 4 May 2015.