Book Review: Waking, Dreaming, Being

This holiday season yielded an excellent book, "Waking, Dreaming, Being" by Evan Thompson.  Merging neuroscience and philosophy,  the author casts new light on the relationship between the self and the brain.  As I browsed the book, I noticed that it started with the Dalai Lama at a conference with neuroscientists at MIT.  I plunked down the change to acquire the eText.

I hope you enjoy this review!

I have always felt the tension between being rational and scientific in my approach with sometimes having an emotional and intuitive reaction to life.  

Perhaps these 3 circles shown in the picture here as a 'venn diagram' will work as a framework to illustrate my point.

Circle 1 - Science
Circle 2 - Religion
Circle 3 - Spirituality (let's squeeze morality into this circle ....)

It seems to me with each of us, these three circles may may intersect, but don't have to be necessarily the same.

What I mean is this:

- i.e. an atheist could be moral (or it is a bad assumption that an atheist is immoral) or 
- a scientist could be spiritual or
- perhaps a religious person 'could' be devoid of morals or spirituality.

But each circle is in the human DNA and coexist as intersecting circles - perhaps there is no escape to such a state of being!

This was my state of mind, as I picked this book up and intrigued by what the Dalai Lama had to say to the scientists at MIT.

At the very outset, a question was posed, which while I did not buy, were intriguing.

1.  Is the brain a 'receiver' (like an antenna) of consciousness?

For example, The eye is a receiver of light.  Light is external to the eye.  But the eye makes use of the light to 'see'. Similarly is the brain an instrument to tap into consciousness that exists in the universe.  I personally do not 'buy' this idea.  But interesting nevertheless.

2.  There are many levels of 'perception' of which what we perceive in our waking state is gross.  It gets subtler from there on.

This seems like a reasonable comment - that is, if you still the mind, you can 'see' a lot more.

The book then turned to dreams, what they mean, how they come about, and what is the difference between the self and the ego of the dreamer during the dreams.

- The key word I learned here is hypnagogia - the transition state between waking and dreaming that produces lucid dreams, hallucinations and sleep paralysis.

- Another wonderful insight is that when we are dreaming, the whole brain is not shut down - different parts of the brain are in different states.

However, I felt here that Evan Thompson missed a HUGE point by not exploring the physical basis for sleeping and dreaming.  Which while not esoteric as topics such as self, consciousness and identity - and more prosaic - is a helpful and meaningful exploration of what the brain is actually doing while we are sleeping.  This New York times article did a fine job exploring this part of the equation:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/opinion/sunday/goodnight-sleep-clean.html?_r=0

I remember that President Obama has commissioned a gigantic project to map the human brain (I think this is bigger than Apollo!).  Here is what Physicist Michio Kaku has to say about this project:  "It is more difficult to map the brain than it was to map the human genome, which took about, initially, 10 or 15 years. Let us realize that the Human Genome Project only talked about maybe 20,000 genes or so that may that govern the human body. The brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons.  That's as many stars as there are in the Milky Way Galaxy.  So this will take a long time!"

The book then took a deep dive into how various neuroscience labs have proceeded with monitoring and experimentation utilizing seasoned Buddhist meditators as their subjects, with the permission of the Dalai Lama - at the Dharamasala.  This work started in ~ year 1990 - so it is a nearly 25 years old field.  The subject is called 'contemplative neuroscience.'

- The Buddhists describe a state called 'Natural Clear Light' - which is quite akin to 'Samadhi' or 'Nirvana' in the Indian tradition.  This is objectless awareness.  And the scientists and experimenters have the hardest time pinning it down both theoretically and measurement wise (fundamental problem - there is no consciousness meter!)

The author begins to tackle a definition of consciousness (but does not complete the task).  He describes it as an emergent property, as I have been saying for a while in my own essays.  However, he departs by saying that even though consciousness is emergent from the brain, it is primary to the brain.  I found this a remarkably curious attempt to square a circle. But I am just reporting here.

The ending of the book was quite excellent and brought it all together.  I might even say that the last chapter stands on its own and delivers an 'aha' - to the question, 'Who am I?'

It is going to be impossible to do justice to this grand finale and deliver the key message.  But here is an attempt.

Problem:  The cognitive error that we (all) make is in thinking that 'I' is a thing.  By thing, I don't mean a physical object - but an entity with essence.  So President Obama thinks he is Obama, an entity.  Scientist Sean Carroll thinks he is Sean, an entity.  That is the cognitive error.  The moment you objectify something, your mental models kick into standard operating procedure of dealing with objects.

Solution:  In reality, what we are is a process.  Our brain senses the environment, it compares the mental model of the environment, with the mental model of itself and acts to make adjustments between the two.

When you close your eyes and investigate who you are, try not to think of yourself as an entity, but rather a process that is flowing with and through you, that is operating at a higher level than cells and organs, but is using them to generate itself and its awareness.

In this model, the problems often pointed out (who is dreaming and in deep sleep) is mitigated, because the process is still flowing through all those states.

This is an excellent theory of self, I believe, that can lend itself to scientific testing, validation and replication - and does not violate either the scientific approach or what Eastern thinkers have been pointing to, over millenia.

Pretty cool stuff, if I may say so!

If the above summary is incoherent, it is because I have not done a good job of extracting the key 'aha' point from this excellent book!  

I am glad I read this book over the holidays.

Now for a more seasoned and professional review of this book, here is the NY Times!!

NY Times Book Review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/books/review/evan-thompsons-waking-dreaming-being.html?_r=0