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Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy Paperback – August 8, 2017
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Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate―either in the waking state or in a lucid dream―we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self.
Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives.
- Print length496 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherColumbia University Press
- Publication dateAugust 8, 2017
- Dimensions5.9 x 1.2 x 8.9 inches
- ISBN-100231136951
- ISBN-13978-0231136952
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Evan Thompson, a philosopher with a deep knowledge of Indo-Tibetan contemplative traditions and modern neuroscience, has written a brilliant and comprehensive book on the nature of awareness and the self. Waking, Dreaming, Being is a dazzling synthesis. Thompson takes on some of the most fundamental questions about the nature of mind and addresses them with remarkable creativity and clarity. This volume is a must read for any serious student of the mind and consciousness. -- Richard J. Davidson, New York Times-bestselling coauthor of The Emotional Life of Your Brain
Drawing on multiple sources of knowledge, all tested by first-person experience and critical analysis, Thompson presents an illuminating neurophenomenological account of what it's like to be a conscious human being. -- Stephen LaBerge, author of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming
Waking, Dreaming, Being powerfully demonstrates how bringing cognitive science, philosophy, and Buddhism into a critical engagement can open innovative ways of exploring the 'hard problem' of consciousness. The blending of philosophical rigor and scientific knowledge with meditative insights, with the author's own remarkable life as the larger background, makes the book a real joy to read. This book will be an invaluable help to anyone who is interested in knowing how the fundamental questions of self, consciousness, and human existence can be explored in a way that combines the best of both East and West. -- Thupten Jinpa, author of Self, Reality and Reason in Tibetan Philosophy
With extensive training in Buddhism, brain science, and phenomenology, Evan Thompson is uniquely positioned to reveal how different perspectives on the mind can be mutually illuminating. He begins with the Buddhist insight that there are many forms of consciousness--far more than traditionally recognized in the West--and he shows that these can be associated with deferent brain processes. The result is a richly original and integrated account of human mental life. Whether you are a curious newcomer or a seasoned expert, you have much to learn from this stunning synthesis of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge science. -- Jesse Prinz, author of The Conscious Brain and Beyond Human Nature
[An] excellent book. ― New York Times Book Review
Extraordinary and exciting claims... beautiful ideas. ― Cosmos and Culture
Contemplative and groundbreaking, Waking, Dreaming, Being is a welcome addition to college library philosophy shelves. ― Midwest Book Review
Waking, Dreaming, Being is an exceptional and intriguing contribution to the exploration of consciousness as a multidimensional self and makes a convincing argument for the usefulness of philosophical, experiential, and scientific approaches to understanding consciousness. -- Marissa Krimsky ― Buddhadharma
A rich, thought-provoking and poetic tour of a wide variety of phenomena of consciousness... ― Constructivist Foundations
A magnificent tome. ― Big Think
This is a ground-breaking exploration of conciousness and the self as they occur across the states of waking, falling asleep, dreaming, lucid dreaming, deep dreamless sleep, out-of-body experiences and dying. Evan Thompson's rich, beautifully written book interweaves lucid prose with relevant personal anecdotes, bringing the latest neuroscience together with ancient contemplative wisdom to offer valuable insightr into the nature of conciousness and the self. -- Miri Albahari ― Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
This remarkable book addresses deep philosophical questions from a unique perspective. ― Choice
Waking Dreaming Being will soon be considered a landmark and a tipping point in consciousness investigations.Journal of Mind and Behavior ― Journal of Mind and Behavior
A lucid and comprehensive account of the self as a subject of experience and agent of action. -- George T. Hole ― Philosophical Practice
A fine book by an extraordinary author. ― Journal of Consciousness Studies
A popular audience should find Thompson’s style both accessible and engaging while academic audiences should be impressed by the breadth and depth of his philosophical scholarship especially given the broad issues and traditions of thought with which he is engaging. -- Jacob Lucas ― Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Columbia University Press; Reprint edition (August 8, 2017)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 496 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0231136951
- ISBN-13 : 978-0231136952
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.9 x 1.2 x 8.9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #485,237 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #263 in Humanist Philosophy
- #694 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy
- #1,253 in Cognitive Psychology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Evan Thompson was born in 1962 in Ithaca, NY, and grew up in Boston, New York, and Toronto. After 8 years as a Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Toronto, he moved in July 2013 to the Philosophy Department at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He writes about the mind, life, consciousness, and the self, from the perspectives of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy (especially Buddhism and other Indian philosophical traditions). As a teenager, Evan was home-schooled in Southampton, NY and Manhattan at the Lindisfarne Association, an educational and contemplative community founded by his parents, William Irwin Thompson and Gail Thompson. He received his A.B. in Asian Studies from Amherst College (1983), and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto (1990). For more information, visit Evan's webpage at http://evanthompson.me
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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
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.
Top reviews from other countries
This is exactly same as being discussed in Mandukya Upnishad.
Our ancient scholars were just amazing.
There wisdom still shining on us.
Consiousness plus object equals experience.
Every single line of book is worth reading and experiencing.
Magnificently describing in details.
Must read for everyone
अहं ब्रह्म अस्ति
Evan, thank you for shining a light on this topic and removing the fog of misunderstanding for scientists and contemplative.
I loved your insight on death and dying and sharing your experience at the retreat guided by Joan Halifax.
This book has caused significant dismay among scientific materialists, and among those who believe mind or being transcends mere physicality, but also, notably, among some philosophical phenomenologists. The first are unhappy because Thompson takes his meditation experiences and the rigorous philosophy developed within Buddhism just as seriously as he does cognitive science or biology. The transcendentalists, including some Buddhists, are disappointed because Thompson stands with a statement from the Dalai Lama, whom he interviewed, that "even the subtlest 'clear state of mind', which manifests at the moment of death must have some kind of physical base" (p. xxii). But while the Dalai Lama concluded his talk with Thompson with cheerful uncertainty: "Whether there is something independent or not, I don't know" (ibid.), Thompson himself seems to side with materialism and proceeds on his fascinating exploration into varied conscious experiences looking but failing to find any that can withstand objective scrutiny of their transcendence of the physical, especially cerebral, sphere. In this process, there is some question whether his phenomenological credentials are put aside as he appears to stand with objective proof as a final arbiter as opposed to knowledge based in personal experience. Michel Bitbol (2015), a noted philosopher of science and phenomenologist, writes positively of Thompson's book but takes issue with his leap into objectivity over the limitations of a purely phenomenological perspective, which would have left his conclusions more open.
On this journey, Thompson produces a most reader-friendly book, laced with personal asides and conversations with other well-known figures. He writes both with clarity and vigour demonstrating vast knowledge over many fields from neuroscience to arcane Buddhist and Indian yogic texts to current consciousness studies. Early on he moves toward a definition of that most difficult of concepts, consciousness, by seeing it as making appearance possible and noting that those sorts of sciences that attempt to exclude consciousness from their purview could hardly proceed without it:
"Without consciousness, the world can't appear to perception, the past can't appear to memory, and the future can't appear to hope or anticipation. The point extends to science: without consciousness there's no appearance of the microscopic world through electron microscopes, no appearance of distant stars through telescopes, and no appearance of the brain through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. Simply put, without consciousness there's no observation, and without observation there are no data." (p. 14)
He defines consciousness in a way that embraces self-identity: "Consciousness is that which is luminous, knowing, and reflexive. Consciousness is that which makes manifest appearances, is able to apprehend them in one way or another, and in so doing is self-appearing and prereflectively self-aware" (p. 18). The word "luminous" indicates his background as a meditator since childhood in Tibetan awareness techniques, not to mention his upbringing and education within his father William Irwin Thompson's Lindisfarne Association.
What does he explore? First he goes through perceptual experiences, illusions, and states of consciousness achieved by meditators, including the state of quiescent awareness possible in deep dreamless sleep and the "fourth state", called simply that, indicating that this is said to be void consciousness (no time, no substance, no objects, and no subject) identified metaphorically in Buddhism as "the clear light." He admits that there is no scientific proof, as yet, of such states and that such proof may be impossible to obtain, but he notes that there is no evidence of anyone attaining such a state (or non-state) without having a physical substrate. He makes no claim to such attainment himself, but, toward the end, suggests such realizations may be the result of stilling the brain via meditation into a state of pure subjectivity without objective content. The Dalai Lama himself admits that, though he believes many advanced meditators have attained the clear light, he himself has no personal knowledge of it.
Thompson goes on to explore the dreaming state in some detail, sharing his own experiences of dream insight and lucid dreaming. He investigates so-called out of body experiences (OBEs), including his own, again concluding that such experiences likely are made of intuition, imagination and dream images, noting there is no proof of the body literally being transcended. At this point, the reader begins to wonder if Thompson is being serious or ironic since his own OBE as a child provided him with insights he could have gained no other way. Much to the disappointment of true believers, Thompson also dismisses the near death experience (NDE) as nothing more than the active imagination released when the parts of the brain are left dysfunctional from heart failure, chemical ingestion, or other accidents, none of which have been proven to happen with an inactive brain or from a perceptual point beyond the body. He does not doubt, however, that the many reports reflect actual experiences, illusory or not.
His most compelling chapter asks "What Happens When We Die?" He begins by honouring the ineffability of the experience of death by questioning the scientific perspective on it: "Yet even if we set aside the issue of whether science gives us good reason to believe that death entails the complete cessation of all consciousness, this conception is totally inadequate because it says nothing about the experience of dying" (p. 275). He notes that Tibetan Buddhism, on the other hand, has built a vast literature around this very transition, from the moment of death to seeking and finding new physical embodiment in another incarnation. However, those who have trained themselves to recognize the luminosity of the "fourth state," that is, the pure awareness in the clear light, will not be reborn but transcend into the All, according to this view. Thompson, perhaps surprisingly, writes, "I'm very skeptical of this way of thinking" (p. 287). He notes that any such post-mortem experience is impossible to report without a living body, leaving the theory based on inference or conjecture, in the process casting doubt on the reports of those who claim to have recovered memories of lives previously lived.
He follows this up with an investigation into the deaths of realized meditators whose bodies reportedly did not begin to decay immediately, often remaining unsullied for days or even weeks. Scientific investigation into these reports continues, but Thompson, for the time being, dutifully accepts the skeptical responses of forensic scientists that bodies often resist corruption in the right environmental circumstances. Again, the reader wonders if Thompson is actually toeing the line of scientific skepticism or if he is being ironic, for in at least some of these cases the corpse of the realized meditator was in southern India, hot and humid and perfect for rot. If these reports are proven to be true, it may be an indication that something more than observable physical life is afoot. But, finally: "It can also help us remember that only the dying can teach us something about death, and what we're called upon to do is to bear witness to their experience" (p. 318). This is a truly phenomenological perspective.
In his final chapter, he explores the contentious area regarding the self. Influenced by Buddhist thought, he seeks a middle way between what he terms the "neuro-nihilism" of certain scientists and philosophers who deny there is a self (for they see no brain function that could support it or they expect the genetics to explain behaviour, as evolutionary psychologists attempt to do) and the intuitive self-reification of others who regard the self as a substantial entity existing fundamentally unchanged along with the body. Based on the ideas of the sixth century Buddhist philosopher, Candrak'rti, Thompson sees the self as dependently arising or, more precisely, dependently co-arising from a juncture of causes. It begins with a self-specifying system at the cellular level. At this point, he ties self-making back to the body and denies that consciousness is merely an information processing system, "for consciousness depends fundamentally on specific kinds of electrochemical processes, that is, on a specific kind of biological hardware" (p. 343). This becomes the basis by steps of the enactive self, "a full-fledged I-making system" (p. 344).
He acknowledges social self-making (the narrative self of phenomenology), and he uses the extensive research of Tomasello (1999) to show that "joint attention" helps draw forth a mirror identity, the sense of self as seen by others. If he had read more recent work from Tomasello (2014), he would have seen Tomasello now supports the deeper social entanglement of "joint intentionality," which hints at an actual sense of group identity that then makes individual self-identity possible. Beyond all this, however, Thompson as an experienced meditator must then deal with the claim that many advanced yogis have transcended the illusion of self and "the body is said to have entered a state of suspended animation" (p. 357). With the enactive self and the socially constructed self-concept, this should be no surprise, for "if the self is a construction, then we should expect that it could be dismantled, even while some of its constituent processes - such as bare sentience or phenomenal consciousness - remain present" (p. 362). For Thompson, enlightenment is not self-extinguishment. "Rather it consists in wisdom that includes not being taken in by the appearance of self as having independent existence while that appearance is nonetheless still there and performing its important I-making function" (p. 366)
Overall, the position apparently taken Thompson on the matter of consciousness might be called "luminescent physicalism." This is not the cold objective materialism favoured by many in the sciences that assumes that life, experience and consciousness randomly evolved out of material interactions. Here the only physical world that can be known is one in which life is already present, and, for Thompson, life is coterminous with mind: when one is present so is the other. One of the implications of this is that those sciences that attempt to explain away the activities of living organisms as driven only by the evolutionary imperatives of survival and reproduction have to make room for individual intentions and perhaps even teleological purpose in nature. At the same time, it is no use speculating about the material universe before life appeared, for, from a phenomenological perspective, such would be an impossibility; there is no form to existence, no presence without consciousness.
Finally, it must be said that summarizing Thompson's position in consciousness studies does not do this book justice. It is a big book but one written in a manner meant to reach a wide, non-specialist audience. Thompson explores a veritable kaleidoscope of real and possible experiences, most of which are familiar enough to entertain; experiences that - agree with his conclusions or not - engage us in a way that academic writing rarely achieves.
References
Bitbol, M. (2015). "When 'altered' states become fundamental." The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 36, 101-112. [...]
Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Tomasello, M. (1999). The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Tomasello, M. (2014). A Natural History of Human Thinking (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).