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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
15. 15
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
16. 16
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
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 Páll S. Árdal. 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 Kozmová, 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.
