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

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. WatsonDepartment of BiologyAlbuquerque, NM, USAUpdated 6-29-2016, 5:52 PM MST

In LEONARDO'S BRAIN, the last work of the late Professor Leonard Shlain, we find a most interesting discussion of the truly mind-boggling mystery of autistic savantism. After informing his readers of a number of cases illustrative of this phenomenon, Professor Shlain writes of a young handicapped girl who between the ages of three and five was somehow able to draw at a level that only trained artists with years of experience could achieve. "No possible theoretical or other scientific explanation for how she could have acquired this skill exists. The acquisition of artistic skills proceed in time." Professor Shlain continues his probing of the mystery and wonders "Did she tap into a collective unconscious source of knowledge that only exists in the space-time continuum?" On page 184 he bravely writes:"Because examples of the space-time consciousness and quantum nonlocality phenomenon violate causality and the limits of space and time, the left brain - and the scientific community - has dismissed these abilities as an anomaly. No one can explain them. Having lumped paranormal phenomena together with UFO sightings and the Shroud of Turin, most scientists assure themselves that the phenomena do not exist. They feel more comfortable working within the confines of science, preferring to focus their attention of what can be proven. Yet, there are too many examples in our culture of abilities that defy our supposed rational world. Sooner or later we will have to let them in."Words of wisdom from the lamentably late surgeon, author and inventor Professor Leonard Shlain. "Sooner or later we will have to let them in..." But in Evan Thompson's 408 pages very little of these "fringe" mysteries are let in. Since it is quite evident in Mr. Thompson's dense and highly redundant text that he prefers to ignore several outre topics by simply closing his mind to them, so it therefore comes as no surprise that nothing is to be found herein relating to the autistic savant. Nor is there any discussion of remote viewing or ESP or hypnosis or death-bed visitations or the alien abduction enigma, to name just a few topics he decided to leave in the dust. Just last month one of my friend's mother died. In her last days she clearly saw something those around her did not see - and that was the appearance of her own long-gone mother and sister to whom she reached out and spoke to. This was not the case of an immediate NDE nor drug-induced hallucination. Apparently, inexplicably the dying woman was seeing something...Beyond. Also completely ignored in Mr. Thompson's tome is the phenomenon of the dead visiting the living. Famed TV entertainer Arthur Godfrey told of when he was a young man in the Navy and at sea on a ship, his father mysteriously appeared before him. Arthur Godfrey couldn't understand what his father was doing in his cabin! He later found out that his dad had died at just about the same time he saw him. "I never could figure it out," Arthur Godfrey sincerely concluded.In discussing the Near Death and Out-of-Body Experience, Evan Thompson takes a largely materialist approach. He leans heavily towards neuroscience in its nuts-and-bolts approach to the mystery of consciousness. Neuroscientists are, however, like myopic fellows with blinders on analyzing the hammers and strings of a piano as it is being played. The hammers hit and wires vibrate and sounds are made and the music is judged as to be coming from the interaction of those materialistic components. Yet so intent on their narrow focus are they that they do not even take into consideration or even seem to be aware of the Maestro who is actually playing the music they so believe is only coming from the mechanistic interaction described. When they probe and twang certain strings and make the hammers hit out a snatch of music, they gleefully conclude they have found the source, the be-all and end-all of the actual music! When they experiment and cut certain wires and disable certain hammers, they then conclude that this is further evidence of the music coming only and solely from the tangible, observable parts of the piano. And when the Maestro leaves the keyboard, the neuroscientists proclaim that since the hammers and wires have fallen silent, then that is all there is, folks - the show is over and the music has died with the quiescence of the keys! In their desire to feel superior to the thing they study, they hardly realize that the brain is a quantum device extended beyond the moment, and without a true knowledge of what Time is, all conclusions about Consciousness (and everything else for that matter!) will be of necessity inconclusive. Heck, neuroscience cannot grapple successfully with and convincingly explain autistic savantism - why would anyone expect it to ever conclusively understand Consciousness or Life or Death?One would further think that in a book with DREAMING in the title, Evan Thompson would at least discuss the precognitive dream. But he closes the door on this as well as precognition in general. Shockingly, there is absolutely no mention of J. W. Dunne whose AN EXPERIMENT WITH TIME dealt personally, psychologically and scientifically with the very real phenomena of the precognitive dream. This book was first published in 1927 and is still in print! As to precognitive dreams, I know they are, indeed, real from personal experience. They are not all just coincidences or misreadings after-the-fact. I once had a dream that I remembered upon awakening that later in the day came true in 99 percent of its particulars. And it was not a case of me subconsciously steering myself to make the dream come true. It involved a complete stranger whom I had absolutely no control over. The thing is this - if the Future already exists in some realm of Time, then Consciousness clearly extends itself in Time, and not merely into the past inventory of memories to use to fashion a dream. Evan Thompson's take on dreams is that they are made of memories and imagination. He never considers whatsoever that they may also be made of glimpses of the future as well as being shared with other consciousnesses. On page 222-223 he recounts his own dream when a young boy about his dog - seeing it in his dream as leashed when the dog was always allowed to run free - and he finds out later that the leash was, indeed, used on the dog for the first time, the time of the dream. Evan Thompson was also three hours away from where the dog was. His father, who was probably much more on the money than his son about such things, saw the dream as clear evidence of an out-of-body experience. All these years later, while admitting that he cannot explain the astral dream, it is clear that Evan Thompson leans to believing it a coincidence. And, honestly, perhaps it was! But because his experience may have been a coincidence, does it mean that the out-of-body literature is all mere coincidence? He none-to subtly suggests his readers think so. Instead of acknowledging - as did the late Professor Shlain - that we are much more than we can ever imagine, the belief of neuroscience and Evan Thompson, apparently, as well is that the answers to where the music originates and emanates from must be found in the piano's hardwired parts - and not in some transcendent realm such as the hands and heart of the Maestro who is actually playing...and composing.When I first got this book I was quite excited. But when Dunne was nowhere to be found in the index and when I saw that Jung was only mentioned on one page - and then only in relation to Freud who is discussed in quite some detail - and when upon reading the highly redundant text I came across nothing of the effects of hypnosis on consciousness, or any glance at the alien abduction phenomenon (another "fringe" realm ignored by Thompson, yet bravely approached and investigated by the late John Mack) nor any serious discussion of reincarnation or the NDE in children let alone adults, with nary a whisper of precognition or remote viewing or quantum physics and its relation to the brain and consciousness and no mention of hyperdimensional space or...I could go on and on with the many absences that should have played some part in the pages of this relatively timid book. If Evan Thompson had only edited out some of the tedious descriptions of his globe-trotting and hob-nobbing and seriously considered some of the topics I've mentioned, I am sure WAKING, DREAMING, BEING would have been a much more interesting and rewarding read than it now is. It would certainly have been a braver book!

The neuroscience was well beyond my grasp as was most of the related Buddhist etc parts. I also got lost in the multiple alternative explanations. Tim

The author seems to fall in line with materialist explanations and even admits that advances in neuroscience may well cover all the current gaps filled with spiritual explanations.The chapter dealing with clinically induced OBEs is very compelling, but I think there was an opportunity, somewhere, to put Dr Ian Stevenson’s four decades of research about past life memories of children? Or Dr Brian Weiss, a gifted intellectual and scientist who gradually shifted away from materialism to a full believer in reincarnation. Or even well known mediums like James Van Praagh?

This is a fine book by an extraordinary author whose literary followers have awaited a definitive statement of his views on consciousness since his participation in the important book on biological autopoiesis, *The Embodied Mind* (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991) and his recent neurophenomenology of biological systems, *Mind in Life* (2007). In the latter book, Thompson demonstrated the continuity of life and mind, whereas in this book he uses neurophenomenology as well as erudite renditions of Buddhist philosophy and a good dash of personal experience to argue for the reality of altered states of consciousness, but also that these states are not distinct from the physical systems that subtend them. He must have touched a nerve, for *Waking, Dreaming, Being* continues to be read and widely discussed by the literate public (just note the reviews and commentaries on the U.S. and UK Amazon.com sites).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.ReferencesBitbol, 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). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of MindThe Cultural Origins of Human CognitionA Natural History of Human ThinkingThe Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience

For all of its clarity and pedagogical merits particularly on sleep research, out of body experiences, and various philosophies of the self of ancient and modern origin, in substance, this book disappoints:i) By its largely unreflected neo-orientalism (in the line of "the tao of physics")There is a strong claim here that the vision of the eastern, especially buddhist mystic tradition, embodied in the old texts but also in the proliferating practices of meditation adepts today, are revealing themselves to be increasingly relevant not only to neuroscientists, neurocognitivists and neurophilosophers of all types, but to all of us miserable, deluded, western cartesian (that devil in disguise), moderns suffering from a serious insufficiency of detachment, presence, enlightenment and bliss. This is essentially the message of the Western Buddhists, many of whom are amongst the more rigorous and reasonable of those who have devoted their life to the cause since the birth of new age spiritualities in the sixties and seventies.ii) By its total neglect of the core of philosophical reflection on the subject in the last 250 yearsAlongside the western buddhist "scientific" re-interpretaions of the classical texts and current meditative practices, the modern philosophies of self covered in the book are those in the anglo-american (Humean) tradition of philosophies of consciousness and language (Dennett, Metzinger, Flanagan,...) especially those who address the latest brain research in their writings, along with a slew of more recent neurological theories of self (Damasio, J. Alan Hobson, F. Varela,...).Forget reading the whole tradition of modern european philosophy apart from the quick stab at Descartes or slight nod to Husserl. Forget Freud, Lacan and psychoanalysis. And especially forget Slavoj Zizek, who takes all these postmodern researchers and thinkers of the self to the cleaners everytime he opens his mouth or writes a sentence.

Great book

More cutting edge thought from Evan Thompson. Important perspective on spirit and mind.

looks splendid. I have not completed reading it yet