Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy

This book is an invitation to delve into buddhist philosophies and history and their points of contact with the Western science of the mind to inquire about the usefulness of meditation. The author, a brain scientist who is also a practicing buddhist, minutely discusses a challenging problem: can we still "exist" after our body stops living? Is there consciousness beyond death? The book also attends to the many paradoxes and perplexities that remain unanswered, though the author wisely engages the reader in an eventful dialogue. The book is wealthy in information, ingenious in elaborating arguments and exploring the subject matter from diverse and often oppositional points of view. It treats the reader as an adult capable of following a complex line of thought as the author is always willing to go the extra mile giving good examples and explaining the meaning and drift of every unfamiliar or technical term. The similarity between the title of Heidegger's essay "Building Dwelling Thinking" and the title of this book --"Waking Dreaming Being"--should not go unnoticed, as "Waking" gives us the opportunity to gather and build upon the elements of material reality, "Dreaming" is the place where we dwell in other to transform that material into knowledge, and "Being" is what we become through the activity of thinking and meditating. It is fun to read and never morose even in its most obscure passages. It took me a week to reach the last page, but when I finished I felt my week had been well spent.

I would like to give this five stars, but the author limits himself to a narrow subject that mostly concerns whether or not consciousness exists apart from the physical body, the brain in particular. This may be fascinating stuff for some, even for many, but is of little interest to me. The waking and dreaming chapters hold moderate interest for me, and the being chapter was disappointing especially, as I read it. Still, if you like the Dali Lama and his thinking, then you may enjoy reading this book. The Dali Lama is a thoughtful man. Unfortunately, I believe that thought is the booby prize in this pursuit.

This book covers a wide-ranging gamut of topics around consciousness, including various aspects of perception, awareness, dreaming/lucid dreaming, sleeping, dying, and a theory of the "enacted self" ("I" as a process). The chapters are chock-full of references to neuroscience studies that are quite relevant, presented neatly in context, and highly thought-provoking. The philosophical discussion (mostly Buddhist and some Vedanta) is well integrated and logically presented. The tone is simulanteously openminded and sober, striking an intriguing balance somewhere between the skepticism of Sam Harris and the idealism of Deepak Chopra. One challenge for me was wading through some of the verbose logical explanations and repetition of some concepts. In places, the book seemed to be written to anticipate the arguments of adversarial philosophers; those parts were less interesting to me. I didn't care how well the book could defend some esoteric models or refute others. What interested me was how well it could bring together philosophical and neuroscientific perspectives, in a way that suggested promising avenues for both experiential and research investigation. It did a fine job at this. The book concludes with an "enacted self" theory on the nature of the ego's construction, which brings together various threads explored in earlier chapters. As far as theories of enlightenment go, it's fairly restrained. It successfully resists (as does the book as a whole) the temptation to claim knowledge beyond one's own experience. It serves to close out the book on its own terms. For me, the book's conclusion was secondary. What's more compelling is the wide-ranging look at the current state and thoughtful recommendations for future work at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, and phenomenology.

Waking, Dreaming, Being By Evan Thompson Waking, Dreaming, Being by Evan Thompson masterfully and comparatively interprets Tibetan Buddhist and Indian Yoga philosophies in light of modern neuroscience. The structure and organization of the book incorporates considerable redundancy that permits readers unfamiliar with Buddhist and Yogic philosophy to easily grasp essential elements of these philosophical schools and sub-schools. Thompson tackles the hard problems of both philosophy and neuroscience with unusual clarity. Forms of consciousness and self (ego) are dissected with the same clarity and interpretive simplification as are the Buddhist and Yogic traditions. There are numerous gathering voices in the West calling for a reintegration of science and the humanities; for example, E. O. Wilson’s The Meaning of Human Existence (2014). Thompson demonstrates the synergistic value of integrating Eastern phenomenology with Western science. The serious student of self and consciousness, as well as the more casual reader, will be lead to a fuller understanding of how the mind can change the brain. Thompson does not co-sign any of the mystic traditions of Yogic and Buddhist philosophy such as reincarnation. He addresses these issues head-on using contemporary research from the neurosciences, and in my opinion, wins. I finished the book’s last chapter with a fuller appreciation of how much the phenomenology of subjectivity can add to the interpretation and understanding of hard science research. Thompson’s last Chapter (10) “Knowing: Is the Self an Illusion?” is masterful. I won’t take the essence of “is self and illusion” apart. To be fully appreciated, this chapter must be read in the original. Chapter 10 will make the materialists of neuroscience— who believe self is an illusion—cringe. Glen Just, PhD, Minnesota U. System, Retired

Here is a good summary of the book by Evans on You Tube. Unfortunately, the answer still seems to be no. This book presents some of the cutting-edge fruits of the otherwise virtuous, impressive and exciting research collaboration between neuroscientists and various serious contemplative practitioners, especially Tibetan Buddhists. This collaboration, however, which follows the great Francisco Varela's vital vision for "Neurophenomenology," still is crippled by virtually everyone involved ignoring what modern evolutionary psychology and Darwinism in general can tell us about what the human brain is "designed" by natural selection to be up to, and trying to accomplish, moment to moment, without our awareness - perhaps, even without the awareness of most of the above-mentioned highly adept practitioners. Today, as I ponder the book more and more, I am reducing my star rating from four to three. Read on to see why. Without evolutionary psychology, these neuroscientists and contemplatives will never formulate and test the most important and revealing hypotheses about the basic human condition, and what, for example, Gurdjieff called "The Terror of the Situation." Evolutionarily naive neurophenomenologists therefore will fail to elucidate the most subtle and devious intrapsychic barriers we all face in trying to foster our exquisite and largely unknown developmental ("spiritual") potentials as humans... The author does a nice job of portraying consciousness as "luminous" (revealing) and "knowing." If he were a Darwinian, he would also warn the reader that natural selection can only create minds that, in any given context, have a consciousness that reveals what is adaptive to reveal, and only knows things in ways that are, in that same context, adaptive ways of knowing. Consciousness, like any capacity, co-evolved with stringent regulatory systems that optimize what is seen and how it is understood in ways that are expected, by unconscious computational systems, to enhance reproductive success in some way or another. Unfamiliar with these ideas? Then its time to activate "Beginner's Mind," squared. Don't like it or believe it? Well, isn't your practice about getting beyond liking and disliking, and not clinging to comforting beliefs? Isn't it about investigation and discovery, as well as being a nicer person? Let me elaborate on the above (this passage added 1/26/15). The following four paragraphs are motivated by the discussion that begins on page 23, where Thompson points out the Buddha's view, contra the Upanishads (huh! ancient wisdom can have deep flaws!) that, "consciousness is contingent and dependent on conditions." Bravo, so far. The whole point of nervous systems is to allow animals to exhibit complex contingent responsiveness to the environment. Consciousness, especially at the human level, is a powerful and very expensive mental capacity that, like any capacity, co-evolved with strict regulatory mechanisms, which render it effective and efficient in maximizing lifetime inclusive fitness of the individual. The regulation of consciousness is unconscious, although certain kinds of meditative training may make the regulatory processes less transparent. But, this is still an empirical question, ignored by Thompson and his ilk mainly due to their faith in Buddhist practice and doctrine and total neglect of Darwinism. If some forms of introspection can reveal the regulatory functions in action, and provide a chance to intervene, perhaps just though observation itself, then those methods would provide a path toward greater consciousness than is automatically allowed to serve purely biological functions. They would lead to greater powers of real intentionality - the ability to more consistently respond to situation in accord with one's most deeply held conscious intentions. But, it should be noted that some meditation may just strengthen the power of these regulatory mechanisms, in fact ALL of it may do so, leading to deeper sleep and enslavement to the regulatory machinery of the brain, albeit associated with a socially adaptive sense of greater peace and an illusion of greater freedom and intentionality. The big point here is that what is going on, right now, in your consciousness and mine, is indeed contingent and dependent, but NOT just on what sensory modality is offering up data to the CNS, like the tongue providing signals that the brain experiences as flavors. No, "misguided man." That is incredibly naive. What consciousness is most dependent on are the unconscious regulatory mechanisms that are constantly optimizing the contents, often in subtle ways, to produce experience which backs up behaviors that are maximally socially efficacious (status enhancing) and otherwise fitness enhancing. Without clear understandings of these dependencies serious (not to mention amateur) meditators, philosophers and, finally, neuroscientists, focusing just on the mechanistic neural correlates of experience are handicapped, at best. This is the major general reason that a robust neurophenomenology program, or one in which ancient wisdom teachings about the mind are used to "enrich" neuroscientific findings are, IMO, doomed. Their "results" may make us feel good, but that is no criterion to use to decide whether any truth about how or who we really are has been revealed. Given these important limitations, this is a lovely and informative book, by somebody very close to Varela, that I'm definitely reading cover to cover. I wish this program of research well. I just wish it could be potentiated further, much further, by broadening the whole collaboration with inclusion of evolutionary psychologists and also, a broader range of neuroscientists. Where, for example, is the work of Gerald Edelman and his colleagues? Yes, the excellent Giulio Tononi is is mentioned, and his theory of consciousness is even briefly described (pp. 251-257), but all in the limited context of a discussion of whether some important subtle form of purified consciousness persists in deep dreamless sleep (Tononi does not think so, and neither do I). Thompson brushes Tononi's view aside with a few lines, using a poorly developed and, I'd say, belief-based counter-argument. Thus, an example of how the book offers little but the author's and Buddhist's (often interesting) beliefs about consciousness, which are based on a psychologically insidious combination of doctrine and experience, and sometimes the loosely aligned findings of a select subset of neuroscientists. I recommend that everyone enamored with Thompson's work pick up this wonderful highly readable little volume: Consciousness: Theories in Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind . It provides succinct perspective on the FULL range of rigorous thought on consciousness, most of it UNenriched by ancient wisdom and phenomenal anecdotes, which often may be a good thing, especially since evolutionary psychology is not yet being used to provide any kind of critical perspective on these experiences and this wisdom. I'm going to be adding to this review as I re-read and ponder the book slowly and carefully. I think I will add material by posting separate comments below, so that nobody has to wade through this opening review to find my additions.) I'll make one additional comment today. In the Introduction (p. XXXV), Thompson states he is not a materialist when it comes to considering consciousness. (I am.) He claims that consciousness has a "cognitive primacy" that scientific materialism fails to see. "There is no way to step outside consciousness and measure it against something else," he writes. I am not sure about this. Qualities of waking consciousness, which I think is what we should be primarily concerned about, vary massively, something I doubt the author or anyone who has done a little self-exploration would deny. Every moment, there is more that we can know and feel than we actually are. "Better" consciousness is always on offer. Anyway, when in a higher state of waking consciousness, we DO step outside other, lower states. We can see their characteristics and their deficiencies from this higher vantage point. Moreover, all these quality variations no doubt have neural correlates waiting to be studied. We'll find, IMO, that they all have materialist bases. For example, the size and moment-to-moment variation of involvement of various neuronal functional groups in the "dynamic core" (sensu Edelman) may explain very well this variation in quality. Relatedly (?), the quality of waking consciousness may be determined by how free from regulatory influences of the limbic system ("values systems," also sensu Edelman) the dynamic core is in its moment-to-moment operation. We must respect and use these higher waking states to study the lower ones at every opportunity. This will give us a new appreciation of ourselves, a new understanding, based on a kind of scientific introspective study, which can be combined with neuroscience investigations. Back to evolutionary psychology - it can help us in this self-study by providing cogent incisive hypotheses about what the mind is like in observable lower states. The more familiar we become with how we are in these lower states, perhaps the less susceptible we will be to being "lived by them," against our best intentions. These highly principled (theory-based) hypotheses from evolutionary psychology, auspiciously available to us only in the past few decades, will make our "discovery rate" much higher, supercharging our self-knowledge and thus our intrapsychic development. Spiritual journeys need all the objectifying influences they can get, and we ignore modern Darwinian understandings of the mind's functional design at great cost to ourselves, our social partners, humanity, and the planet, with all its wonderful sentient beings... The author has a vision for, "a new scientific and spiritual appreciation of human life, one that no longer requires or needs to be contained within either a religious or an antireligious framework." I support this goal very much. It would be a big step forward in human cultural evolution. I have long taught a course on "the evolution of religiosity" (the package of evolved instincts that drive us toward supernatural thinking and religion-making) that is not any more anti-religious than a biologically-based course on spiders would be anti-silken-web. Religion has important socioecologically adaptive functions that evolutionary psychology gradually reveals, and which cognitive science probably cannot, since it cannot explain why the mechanisms it discovers exist as they do with out evolutionary analyses. Moreover, to speak of "contemplative knowledge," which the author seems to believe in, strikes me a showing a great deal of over-confidence that issues from not fully appreciating how natural selection has designed the mind. It is too early to place much faith in "contemplative knowledge;" for now I only admit the existence of strong "contemplative impressions." However, unbiased evolutionary understanding of religion will reduce (much better than overt antireligious attacks) peoples' illusion that there is something divine going on within religion, thus reducing their attraction, and freeing people to develop and truly own this vital new appreciation of human life. Again, evolutionary psychology and evolutionary neuroscience would lend greatly to more rapid attainment of the author's stated and perhaps central vision... BTW: here is a summary of the book, and more recent work, by Evans, on You Tube: [...] Thank you to my dear nephew Alexander for giving me this book for Christmas! A beautiful hard copy. Follow this thread for additional commentary... Dr. Paul J. Watson Department of Biology Albuquerque, NM, USA Updated 6-29-2016, 5:52 PM MST

ET has made a thorough and systematic review of the research on consciousness, dreaming and meditation practices understandable and even entertaining. He surely cites the scientific and religious sources, but he includes diverse references from literature (that remind one how profound literature can be at informing these topics) and philosophy. He enlivens his discussion with revealing personal experiences and even occasionally is funny, all while making this esoteric subject accessible to the interested, average reader. A very fine book.

Too technical in beginning. But, interesting.

This was probably the best book I have ever read. Never before have I read a book and walked away feeling like my entire worldview was changed until now. Evan Thompson is doing incredible work and I look forward to all of his future work. The academic community and the contemplative community at large are both very fortunate to have him. Thompson takes topics that seem infinitely esoteric to outsiders and renders them approachable to those with a good foundation in cognitive science. This is a book that the cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy community would benefit from reading, and a book that anybody with an interest in meditative practice and more profound contemplative experiences would benefit from reading.