>> Ready? Everybody, welcome to another media lab conversation series.
This one is a little bit unique in that it's part of a class on awareness that
Tenzin and I are teaching. So, many of our students are here. And, just for
the people in the audience, we are going to be streaming this and we will be
looking for questions on Twitter. So, if you send tweets and use… put the
hashtag MLtalks we will be tracking that so, generally the format for these
conversations series are: a presentation by a speaker at the beginning, that
then a conversation with me, then we involve the audience later. But, today I
wanted to actually have Tenzin who is the…let me make sure I get this right…
the director of the Dalai Lama Center of Ethics and Transformative Values.
He and I are teaching a course on awareness together but he does a lot of
speaking and working both at MIT and in the world. He was originally going
to be part of the conversation but he has an important visitor from out of
town that he has to attend to
[Laughter]
…so he's going to leave after he introduces our speaker so, Tenzin?
>> Thank you Joi. Good afternoon. Welcome to the media lab conversations.
I'm delighted to introduce a dear
friend and learned scholar, Alan Wallace, who is, among many things, he is
having something called the Santa Barbara Institute for consciousness
studies. In the realm of science, especially in the realm of science at MIT,
often times we don't touch subjects like consciousness or awareness. In
fact, for most times, we don't even touch subjects like: who am I? What am I
doing? Where am I going? So, these are the some of the parts of our
conversations today that Joi will be moderating. As Joi mentioned, this is
part of a course called principles of awareness where we are sort of
exploring what does it mean to be an aware being, an aware individual. Alan
comes to us from a very interesting background. He's a Buddhist studies
scholar, but also a religious studies scholar but also did his academic work
is physics as well. So, he has perspective on disciplines. Beyond that, he has
been interacting with some very renowned learned individuals so he will be
bringing all that perspective to us this afternoon. So, thank you again for
joining us, Alan.
>> Thank you, Tenzin
[Applause]
>> I will be your listener while you speak.
[Laughter]
So, why don't you start by giving us some of your thoughts to kick us off?
You can talk for a little while that we can start the conversation.
>> I should share something… some of my thoughts… [Laughter]
I've got many, I’ve got plenty to spare. We're addressing of course
a very central aspect of reality. Of course, the very core to our very existence
here, as sentient beings. The nature of awareness. One of the few elements
of the natural world that has been studied to some extent for which there
seems to be no scientific consensus whatsoever, about many functions of
the brain, of the mind, and of course, the external physical quantifiable
objective world an enormous body of consensual knowledge gained over
the four centuries since Galileo. When you come right to our essence, what
defines us as sentient beings and among sentient beings our humanness…
to overlook consciousness, to overlook awareness, is overlooking
something very essential. So, my own approach to this topic is one in this
spirit of William James is one of my intellectual heroes and my approach of
one of radical empiricism. I try to approach it with a lot of use of Occam's
razor because I think there's a lot of beards growing in scientific,
philosophical, and religious discourse about the nature of awareness,
consciousness, soul, so many assumptions built in that sometimes it's hard
to clear it out and see what's there prior to and independent of our many
religious, philosophical, materialistic assumptions we bring to bear. So, just
when I was downstairs entering here in the media lab, I had a couple of
minutes to spare before my host came down and picked me up. I saw the l
ittle placard there. It was a tribute to Marvin Minsky. There was a quote that
caught my attention because I agree with everything he said. Although I
disagree with other points of course and that was, I think I can quote them
verbatim or at least paraphrase, “No computer has ever been designed to
ever be aware of what it does for the most part. Most of the time we aren't
either”. I’ll say it again. It's a good one. No computer has ever been designed
to be aware of what it does. Most of the time we aren’t either. I think it's very
cogent. To speak of computer awareness is to speak in the realm of
imagination without empirical basis. Because since scientifically, unless
something happened yesterday that I'm not aware, we have no scientific
objective measuring device to actually be able to detect the presence of
awareness or consciousness in anything. It would be very cool if we did. If
we just want a little bit of a tangent here… the whole pro-life pro-choice
debate… I think it's debated on both sides by very decent and in many cases
compassionate consciences people. Morally, arguing for position they
believe in. But of course, the whole debate is taking place in a morass of
ignorance. At what point in the mother's womb…at what point is this
basically a body part like a kidney you have to give away and not have
consulted anybody? At what point is it a passenger? The Conductor of a
train does not have a legal right just to throw out people if you just don’t like
them or if they are inconvenient or whatever reason. You can't do that
because they’re sentient beings. Even a dog, you can’t just throw it out the
window even if your taking care of a train. Was is it? A body part or
passenger? Well, I would think we all agree that an egg is a body part. You
can sell it, freeze it, dry and eat it if you like. But, it's a body part. Likewise,
the man's sperm. Do whatever you like with it- it's yours. At some point- and I
don't pretend to know when- with the union of egg and sperm… At some
point whether it's simultaneous, as the Roman Catholics believe, a month
later, a trimester later, three months, six months, whenever… at some point,
there's a passenger there. Right? It's two beings. One is inside of the body of
another one. In which case, even if we look at it as an animal and why not in
its earlier phase… it’s at least something that is protohuman. One must think
it must have some rights. Animals have rights. At what point is about does it
have rights? At some point a passenger has rights. I'm not arguing a
position one way or another. It would just be so much easier… in the clear, it
would be much clearer common ground we’re actually debating about if
there was scientific way of measuring. When is the body part no longer body
part? When is it a passenger? So, consciousness… We have no scientific
means of observing it, no scientific definition. I think there are about 50
floating around. There's no consensus whatsoever. We don’t know causes it.
We don't really know what happens at death. Because, if you can’t define it,
can’t measure it, and don’t know what causes it. We have a lot of beliefs.
And they may be supported by a lot of evidence but, nevertheless, it’s a
belief. So, what I’d like to do here, for couple of minutes is simply say, “Well,
can we define it phenomenologically? Can we define consciousness, our
own awareness? Which we do know intimately from a first-person
perspective can we define it?” I'm going to try to do that. The source of this
is Buddhist phenomenology. Not metaphysics, not religious beliefs, not
dogma, but as we look right into our own experience of being aware. What
are the salient characteristics of being aware that come to our attention?
Here's one of them, try it on for size. And that is, right now, as I gaze out at
you, at all these cameras, a lot of appearances are arising. I'm seeing colors.
I can her my own voice. I can feel the tactile sensation throughout my body…
hear background noise. Appearances are rising a lot of background ambient
noise here, as I think we are all aware. So, what is it that's making the
appearances…philosophers call it the qualia…the qualia of these immediate
sense impressions that we are all expensing right now? What is making that
possible? Any neuroscientist, or any decent physicist will tell you that the
sounds we are hearing are not traveling through the air. Soundwaves yes…
Sounds we hear? No, they arise in dependence with our auditory cortex.
Likewise, colors are not traveling through the air smacking and getting…
hitting us smack dab in the retina. Photons, electromagnetic fields, whatever
models you like, that's what’s traveling through the air. So, what is it that is
actually enabling appearances to arise? They are clearly, as an indication of
visual impressions arise up in dependence upon our visual cortex. Prior to
that, there's a series of electrochemical events with the retina and the
photons out in space. What is it that enables it? Because the neurons don't
become red, yellow, green, blue… The notion of colors actually emerging
from neurons? If we just kind of reboot, throw out all of our assumptions,
use Occam's razors right onto the skin does it really make any sense? To
think that smells are emerging from neurons, that colors are emerging from
neurons?… That neurons are actually turning purple or light blue when I look
at this placard here? Doesn’t really make any sense, does it? Either they turn
blue old or is blue magically wafting off like mist off of a lake. That they are
somehow coming out of… It’s about as reasonable as thinking that if you rub
a lamp, a genie will pop out. There's no evidence for it. So, what's making
them… if it's not neurons, if it's not photons...what is creating the
appearances themselves? Of course, that they arise independently upon the
brain is not contested. But, where they coming from? Why don’t you just take
the obvious candidate? Consciousness makes for appearances.
Conciousness illuminates the quality of the five physical senses. But not
only that…we’re going to go into dreaming a bit later… what’s the source of
illumination? All the colors, all the brightness the sounds, the smells, the
taste of what we experience in a dream… what's manifesting all those
appearances? A friend of mine recently had a dream, a lucid dream, and it
was so bright that he had to put on sunglasses inside the dream.
[Laughter]
Cool, right? Why? He's putting on dream sunglasses to protect retina that
don't exist… because you don't have a physical head inside of the dream
andyou don't have any photons striking the retina from the nonexistent sun.
And so, exactly where is that brightness coming from that you can actually
dim it when put on dream sunglasses? Okay, how about consciousness?
This is a quality of consciousness. It's not a quality of computers,
computers by themselves, my cell phone, or whatever, they don't create
appearances. Look at them and appearances arise. But, a computer doesn't
create or generate appearances. So, there's one. Consciousness illuminates.
It illuminates not only our sensory impression but also, are you aware of
your emotions from moment to moment? Are you aware of whether your
mind is active, or dull, or conceptually agitated, or whether you’re quiescent,
whether you’re bored, whether you’re interested, whether you are happy sad
fearful or sanguine… I think we are, right? I think we all know that. What is it
that's illuminating your first-person experience to ourselves? How about
consciousness? You can actually observe it happening. On the one hand, as
I am gazing out again, I am getting these sensory impressions, shapes and
colors, shapes and colors, but something more is taking place. As I gaze at
your sweater, I’m not only getting the qualia, I am not only getting the green
that’s appearing but I'm also getting that you’re wearing a sweater. You're
not naked, you’re not wearing a sports jacket. I'm looking and there's a
knowing, there. I know that the square root of -1…what is it… it is an
imaginary number isn’t it? Square root of -1. I know that. Not much comes to
mind. Not much in the way of imagery except for maybe the symbol comes
to mind. I know that the square root of 64 is okay… 8. But I don’t need much
imagery for that. There is knowing. That is not the same of appearances
arising… Sometimes the cognizance does not have much of an appearance
quality to it… Sometimes there is a lot of appearance but not a lot of
knowing. Like, “I saw something but I'm not quite sure what it was”. You
know? So, how about these two? Maybe I am finished. If consciousness has
it’s defining characteristics… quality of illuminating, making, manifest
appearances, and the quality cognizance, of actually knowing…
consciousness has that. Anything that is conscious has those qualities and
anything that isn't doesn't. We come back to Marvin Minsky's statement,
though. And, that is, a computer of never aware of what it's doing. It is not
designed as such. Who would know how to design it? When you can't
scientifically measure the presence or absence of consciousness, let alone
how much consciousness, then the notion of… Michael Graziano the
scientist from Princeton and a recent article in New York Times saying you
can program a silicon chip to be aware. Well, I say, that's a very nice fantasy.
Where is your evidence? You can't measure it so how would you know
whether you have programmed it successfully or not? So, it seems to be an
utterly vacuous statement by person who is a neuroscientist. I mean if it's
poetry it’s poetry. But when he goes on to say that we have no subjective
impressions at all that's why there is no mind-body problem... And if
physicists of distinction like Michio Cochran are saying the same thing…
Daniel Dennet. Distinguished philosophers are saying the same thing, I'm
wondering if is the greatest insult you could give to a sentient being is that
you're not sentient. And you expect them to listen to you. There should be
laughter right there. If they’ve heard you they have refuted you. So, I'm going
to throw that one out. It's so absurd it doesn't even deserve a response
because if you respond you already proven that he’s wrong. So, here the
mind-body problem is present. It doesn't go away. Computers, as far as I
know, have never been designed to be conscious and they don't know how
to make them conscious because if they did they would know whether they
have succeeded. This is Occam's razor less just trim it back and say, “Alright,
why don’t we be absurd for just a moment?”. Am I aware of any of you being
conscious? I can't register consciousness maybe just a bunch of
mannequins, or zombies, or what have you. I'm going to throw that one out
really quickly. My parents were both conscious I'm their kid, they look a lot
like me so I'm finished. Other creatures, if you go to primates, and then dogs,
and lizards, and caterpillars, we get down to single celled organisms and I
get very hazy very quickly. I don't know where the cutoff is. I know I'm
conscious and, in fact, that's the most indubitable knowledge I have. I won’t
even use the word “I” like Descartes does. Because I'm not quite sure what
the reference of it is. I'm conscious therefore… I will just simply say
consciousness happens. Consciousness is being experienced which is
actually redundant. Because if not conscious it’s not experience. But, our
most indubitable knowing, our knowing of knowing, our new awareness of
being aware. We could all be dreaming right now, in principle. I could be a
home asleep in Santa Barbara right now and dreaming that I came to the
illustrious MIT and spoke before an augurous community and it’s all going
on Twitter something. I wake up and…oh… Alan you were dreaming. It could
be that’s possible, in principle,it is not inconceivable or irrational. The notion
that awareness is not taking place at all, is the most irrational premise one
can make. So, a computer has not been, maybe never will be, designed to be
conscious. Most of the time we aren't either. And, of course, I think what
Marvin Minsky is getting is not that we are absolutely unconscious but
perhaps that we could become a lot more so That's what meditation is
about. I'm speaking from the Buddhist tradition, a central theme, it is not the
only one but it's certainly core. To some extent, we are not only conscious
indisputably, but can we become more so? For the five physical senses, for
our consciousness of the objective, physical, quantifiable world… The
natural sciences have received 400 years of applause for extending our
consciousness, our awareness, our knowing of what’s taking place
objectively and physically quantifiably in the world around us including all
the world around us- including our own brains. But, what about our
subjective experience, for which everything your thinking, feeling, sensing,
desiring and so forth? All of your subjective experiences without
consciousness is all invisible to every instrument of technology. Brain
correlates? Yes, of course, behavioral expressions? Yes, of course. But my
hero William James said that as a pioneer of modern cognitive science,
when it comes to studying the mind, if by this you mean our subjective
experience, and not simply reducing it into behavior- as John Watson
company did- not simply reducing it to neurophysiological activity as many,
many neuroscientists and people in artificial intelligence do. If we’re actually
willing to take the bull by the horns, and actually experience our own minds
from our first-person perspective. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires,
perceptions attention and so forth and dreams then we have a domain of
reality here that is invisible once again to all instruments of observation
objectively. Which is what science is good at, but there's hope. We are
already aware some extent from a first-person perspective of own mental
states, processes, and so forth. So, if that's only avenue … if that’s the only
mind we can actually observe… Then why not do it better? And that ,
remarkably, since the time of William James, who emphasizes so strongly
and eloquently from my perspective- and I been watching this fairly closely
for the past 30 years, in terms of the refinement of metacognitive
awareness… not just leaving this at the level folk psychology. Just like folk
astronomy was called astrology where you just look up in the sky and say,
“Wow. 4,000 little bright spots. A sun and moon and a whole bunch of bright
spots Wow, isn’t it beautiful, this adornment for our planet?” That's folk
astronomy – called folk astrology, that is exactly where we are in the year
2014. After about 135 years of the cognitive sciences. As far as I can tell
there has actually been no progress at all. In refining and making
sophisticated and making rigorous our one empirical avenue to making
actual observations of mental states, of consciousness, mental processes
including dreams, this is an area that has enormous weakness to the point
of nonexistence in modern cognitive science. I studied sognitive psychology
one of the Stanford, I find it quite remarkable. In the preface, there were
allusions to introspection as a phase of modern psychology that didn't work
therefore, “We’re not going to try that anymore”. And then went on to the
whole study of the mind irrespective of, independent of, and completely
dismisses introspection. To my mind, that makes about as much sense as
trying to start a new discipline of astronomy but banning telescopes. So, is
there anyone on the planet is actually good at this, who has developed
refined methods for investigating, probing into, and exploring the nature of
the mind and possibly even multiple dimensions of consciousness,
exploring dream states, even exploring dreamless sleep. Since science
hasn't… basically no progress at all. I would say, well the answer is yes,
contemplative traditions all over the world. Early Christianity, the Kabala
tradition, the Sufi tradition, among the Abrahamic religions, Buddhism,
Hinduism, Daoism, it’s a strength. So, this is not competition. I’ll just now
speak from Buddhist perspective. Buddhism has no neuroscience at all. No
quantitative behavioral science at all, so there's no competition. What it
really is, is complementarity. Let's just take this one point, we are already
aware, to some extent, of our own mental processes, states of
consciousness and so forth. Is it possible to become more aware with
greater precision, greater sophistication, reliability and when we make
actual discoveries, might they be replicable? This is one of the problems or
the challenges. In trying to introduce introspection of the first-person
perspective into the scientific study of the mind. First-person experience
private. So, if I tell you I just witnessed a certain thought, or emotion, or I had
this dream last night, how would you know that I’m telling the truth or
whether I’m lying, mistaken, or I am misinterpreting, and there's all sorts of
variations there, and since it's private, it’s subjective, doesn't it kind of leave
everybody else live in the dark? The answer is yes, but it doesn't have to be.
That is… Let's take another very subjective discipline: mathematics. The
foundation of all the sciences, right? Mathematic, the language of nature.
When mathematics… when Mathematicians, when they are seeking to
develop a proof of a certain theorem, they often do it on their own. They
write it all out and that some point- I learned this when I was studying
calculus at Amherst… advanced calculus… at some point the proof-happens.
At some point you have the decisive moments, that epiphany of knowing
that something all of these illogical steps that got you there. Then you say
QED, okay? That's subjective. Entirely subjective. How would anybody know?
The answer is… they do. You show your work to other people and they will
take it step-by-step- if they are highly trained. They will or will not come to
the same conclusion. Right? So, if you have a community of
mathematicians, who are not brainwashed, but simply given the same
discipline, the same training… so recipients of the field medal…that’s by
meritocracy. People know who the top-notch mathematicians are that
among highly trained mathematicians there is, in fact, a lot of intersubjective
truth. A lot of discoveries that are made. Each one private, but they are
replicated, and then through their discourse, through knowing each other
are, they can tell who the really good mathematicians are. They can tell. If
I'm a brilliant mathematician who came up with a new proof and you
understood it, then I can tell you. I could see, by speaking with you, whether
or not you really got it. It’s true isn’t it? So, it’s subjective and yet it is also
intersubjective. Here's an ability, the ability to observe in a rather objective
way, ironically, and that is to sit quietly let your awareness be very still and
then simply observe what thoughts, images, memories, fantasies, desire
and emotions are coming up. Seek to be wholly present with them in a
discerning, intelligent fashion. Then, what happens if you do that for 5,000
hours? Maybe 10 hours a day? I did a six-month solitary retreat last year, ten
hours a day. It got interesting. You do something 12 hours a day for six
months… It’s not like doing it for 20 minutes a day. Things settle…insights
start to come and discoveries start to be made. If other people spent 6
months or 6 years or 30/40 years in comparable research… first-person i
nvestigating the nature of the mind, low and behold you start coming out
with some intersubjective, replicable discoveries that can be made and
again. It’s not a matter of competition, and it's not like the religious people or
the contemplatives win and the scientists have egg on their face at all. It's
complete complementarity. I’ve spoken before neuroscientists all over the
place including twice here at MIT. I've asked them, “When you're doing your
neuroscientific studies, studying the neural correlates of subjective
experience, would it be to your advantage would it not to your advantage if
among the people you had into the lab were not simply ordinary people
called off the street, or people with psychological disorders, or people with
brain damage, but if you can call in to the lab to hook with your EEG or the
MRI… If you could call in people would have put in 10,000, 20,000, 30,000
hours of training, so that when you asked them to visualize something and
hold a visualization for a minute, and contrast the seven seconds which is
what's Stephen's Consulate said. You max out at 7 seconds. That’s for
Harvard undergraduates. They can actually hold it for a minute. Now,
generate this emotion please, now generate this memory, and now generate
this. If you could actually have highly trained contemplative's in the lab
they’re doing the things that neuroscientists can't do. There is no
competition here. The contemplatives are not vying to get the tenure
position in neuroscience, but the neuroscientists don’t have this training
either. I see this is very fruitful grounds of interdisciplinary, collaborative
research. We get professionals on both sides. Not just studying the brains
and behavior of meditators which characterizes every single study on
meditation as far, but actually bring these professionals together with
professionals. In this way, rather than simply identifying with the thoughts,
emotions and desires or so forth that come up: I’m thinking this, I’m feeling
that and so forth. Rather than simply this cognitive fusion with every mental
state and processes that takes place, you’re at rest, clearly, objectively
disarmingly aware of whatever arises in the mind. In other words, within this
subjective domain that you have a certain subjectivity objectivity. Might that
be useful? So, that you become more and more lucid, that it is, knowing
what is happening in the mind rather than being, as Marvin Minsky said, not
conscious or quasi conscious- caught up in our rumination and wandering
thoughts and so forth and going through life as a quasi-zombie. I'll finish
one final point and that is a juicy one, I think. We’ll have some good
conversation on. If Marvin Minsky is right, and most of the time were not
conscious… So, let's say that's we are semi-conscious- let’s say non-lucid we
are not entirely oblivious, we’re not entirely unconscious but not clearly
cognizant of what's going on in our minds. If it's possible to become more
lucid knowing about the emotions that arise before we actually act on them.
As my dear friend, Paul Ekman a very renowned affective psychologist said,
“Between the spark and the flame”. Between the spark of an emotion arising
in your mind and the flame of behavior being expressed from that emotion…
if you can be aware of the spark before it manifests in the plane. Then you
may avoid some regrettable episodes. Well, good idea I think yeah?. We
don't follow every desire we don't have to follow every thought. Only if we
are aware of them will become lucid. Now let’s go into the nighttime. Most
of our dreams, most of the time, are non-lucid. When the dream first begins,
we are not aware we are unaware that we've begun dreaming. In that
unawareness… unawareness is very fruitful ground for delusion, for
misapprehension reality and that's universal truth. In the first moment of a
dream, if we're not aware, in the second moment, we're probably
misapprehended for something that is not... namely, if people are appearing
in the dream you think: that's a person, that's my enemy, that's my friend,
that's a mountain, this is the office and so forth. In other words, all of this is
a pure creation of your own mind but you've not recognize that and you
mistake for something that is not. And that is that these are real people out
there. They are threat, they might be helpful, and so forth and then we are
emotionally reacting with a whole bandwidth of emotions we have in a
waking state. We’re quite helpless in that quasi-conscious state. We are not
unconscious. We are aware of the events of the dream but we are
unconscious that they are events in a dream. It makes us very vulnerable.
We are acting largely out of habit. Well, many of you know from your own
experience…can I ask for a raise of hands, because I am just curious, how
many of you have had at least one lucid dream in your life? You've had a
lucid dream, and you’re dreaming and you are aware that you are dreaming…
standard. More than half. I do ask that question and in a lot in a variety of
venues first time at MIT…more than half. So, you know what it’s like, you
know, that you become aware that you are dreaming while you’re dreaming.
Suddenly, you have a broader bandwidth of freedom. You're, now, not simply
the victim of the people or the circumstances, events and so forth taking place in your dream.
You're aware that it is a dream. Number one, there is often a sense of
euphoria a sense of well-being and a kind of thrill and excitement but also
there's a bandwidth of: how lucid are you? So, when I had one of my earliest
lucid dreams I got so excited, so thrilled. Wow. I have had one of these before
and it was really cool. This is my second one this is a real narrative. I was in a
diner in my dream and I was a real evangelist. Not for Buddhism or any
religion, but I was an evangelist. I went from one person to another in the
diner all of them quiet, hunching down over their hamburger and french fries
and I said, “you know, this is a dream?” I went from one table to another, “You
know this is a dream?” I really wanted everybody to wake up. Not a single
person would give me any attention at all. They just wanted their hamburgers
and fries. They wouldn’t even say “Buzz off” or “you’re stupid” or “I agree with
you” or “I don’t agree with you”. No response at all. I was disappointed. I
thought this is the coolest thing that was happening and everyone thought
hamburgers were cooler. This is an interesting point isn't it? Again, from
Marvin Minsky, you never see the society more vividly than when you're
having a lucid dream. What is so odd about it is that you know everything
here is a manifestation of your own mind but you also find out very quickly,
as I did in that dream, that you can't predict the behavior of the other people
in the dream. I would have expected more of a response than that. I would've
expected more than no response at all. We don't know how people will
behave in our own dreams in the society of the mind. Now, I'll say in closing, a
lucid dream, I say, is the optimal lab for the scientific, radically empirical
study of the mind. Just as the physics labs, and I’m sure you have many of
them here at MIT. You have a big advantage. Everything in a laboratory is
made out of physical stuff. In principle, you could just hit rocks off the wall
and do some physical experiments. Everything is physical. Your body is
physical too. So, all of your interactions in the lab… it's perfect for a physical
job because everything is physical. When you’re in a lucid dream, everything
is mental. In fact, there's nothing physical at all. You know who demonstrated
that? MIT's own Richard Feynman. When he was an undergraduate here
many, many, years ago, he had to take a course in psychology. He took a
course in psucology. He had to do a research project. He was naturally gifted
in lucid dreaming. What he really loved was physics, he wasn’t interested in
psychology much at all. What did he do? He would wait until his next lucid
dream and then he ran physics experiments in his lucid dream to see whether
the basic laws of science and mechanics, and he took Newton, were still
operative in a dream. All you who have had lucid dreams and those of you
who have not, you may already know the answer. Have any of you ever flown
a dream? Sure, is one of the funnest and easiest things to do. Well, then you
know already the laws of physics do not apply to a dream. Therefore, isn’t
this one-step logic? Therefore, everything that takes place in a dream is not
physical otherwise the laws of physics would have to apply and they don't.
Dreams are nonphysical. But if night time dreams are not physical then so
are your daydreams not physical. They have no physical attributes. When you
try to observe them physically you can’t. That seems to pretty tight argument
that dreams are not physical. In fact, as you become lucid, because as a
whole gradient… how lucid? how lucid? Can you walk through walls? Can you
breathe underwater? There's no less air underwater than there is above water
because is nowhere in the dream at all. And so forth. You're expanding your
degrees of freedom. You are freer and freer the more clearly and accurately
and deeply you understand the nature of the reality you’re experiencing,
right?. Now, that gives you very clear sense of a way to explore the
illuminating quality of consciousness. Every appearance you are picking up,
including your own emotions and desires in the dream they're all limited by
consciousness and of course it's dependent upon the brain but they're
illuminated by the consciousness. But now how about sheer cognizance?
You also know things are happening in taking place in the dream. Next time
you're having lucid dream you might want to run a simple experiment. It's
very easy, very quick. You’re in the midst of a lucid dream just stop. Stop
doing anything in fact you may as well close your eyes. In the dream. Within
seconds, I can pretty much will guarantee you with that the whole
dreamscape will vanish. Out of sight. Out of mind. Out of existence. The
dream isn't waiting for you someplace when you close your eyes there's
nothing there waiting for you. When you open up your eyes again what
happens? Imagine you’re brilliantly lucid, cognizant, bright, intelligent in your
lucid dreams you close your eyes and then you’re suddenly in a vacuum. An
open vacuity. But you're still lucid. So now you're in not stage IV non-REM
sleep. Dreamless sleep but you're still lucid. Your cognizant. You know you're
in a state of dreamless sleep but in terms of appearances pretty much
nothing. It's sheer vacuity. If you'd like to explore the nature of consciousness
bare-bones, unadorned, raw, naked, that's what you get when you're in deep
dreamless sleep. It's not filtered it's not adorned with the appearances of the
of the five physical senses. It is not adorned with all the thoughts of imagery
we are having in the waking stage or the dream state. It's just naked raw
awareness itself. That can be quite insightful. So, the parallels between lucid
dreaming and lucid waking state both to be cultivated through rigorous
meditative training is I think a topic that is very juicy and maybe we'll start
now with the conversation.
>> Thank you, Alan that was very interesting. I know I'm probably
channeling my students a little bit because we talk about lucid dreaming.
>> Sure.
>> First, a simple question: nature or nurture? So, you said little
more than half of the people have had it happen. Can you train
to do it? How much of it is how you were wired and how you were born and
how much of it is what you do…. it sounds like fun. I know one of our friends
who actually says he spends about 1/3 of his dream time working in his lucid
dream. It seems a bit boring.
>> Then you’d get paid overtime.
[Cross talk] [Laughter]
>> But, do you study lucid dreaming and the induction of lucid dreaming?
Is that a thing?
>> I do. Nature and nurture… I don't think it's all that different
than from mathematics. Is it nature or nurture? Some people
are brilliant some people of a hard time with even basic mathematics.
Mathematics, tennis, piano… some people are more gifted than others. But,
even if you’re not gifted at all if you have reasonable intelligence you can
certainly make some progress in mathematics you can learn to play
something on the piano, maybe hit the ball in tennis. Some people like
Richard Feynman himself, I doubt very much he had any informal training in
lucid dreaming, he was naturally gifted. Other people say not only do I not
have any lucid dreams, I don't remember any of my dreams at all or I very
rarely remember any dream. From the studies I've read, everybody dreams.
Everybody has 5 to 7 dream cycles per night. This is… it’s not that they are
suffering from brain disorder, they are dreaming. But, they're forgetting their
dreams. So, the short answer is, sure. Some people are more gifted than
others but even if one is not gifted unless one has some sort of
psychological or neurologial brain disorder, it is an ability that can be trained.
>> Do you do that? Is there, at your center, do you have classes in lucid
dreaming, where you teach people how to do it?
>> I lead retreats. I lead meditation retreats. I like to have a captive audience.
That is a place that is quiet and contemplative…
everything is taken care of. Food and all of that. So,
people for a week, for example, have nothing else to do except for sit, receive
instruction, and put the instruction to the test of the experiment or
experience. So, the answer is yes, but I’ve also had the good fortune to have a
long-standing friendship with Stephen LaBerge. We were at Stanford
together. He is among the most distinguished, accomplished scientific
researchers in the field of lucid dreaming. He's a good example. He is
naturally gifted. Then when it came time for him to do his doctoral
dissertation at Stanford he wanted to do something different, he wanted to
do something innovative. He did it on lucid dreaming because at the time-
this was the mid-80s or so- the scientific establishment was on the whole…
did not accept the reality of lucid dreams at all. They would say it’s a false
memory. So, there was no objective evidence and it's tough isn't it? How do
you show objective evidence when you're having lucid dream? The
psychologist would say…. if it's a closed- minded one, no, no you’re having a
false memory. You know why? Because you can't be awake and asleep at the
same time. They just refuted it with logic. and not knowing that, of course
you can. Stephen LaBerge actually came up with the first physical evidence.
It was quite compelling I’ll tell you what it is. It’s rather interesting. He was
working in the dream lab with William DeMent, one of the top sleep
researchers in the country at the time in the mid-80s. They had somebody in
the lab asleep. They were tracking everything, EEG, galvanic skin response,
brain states, and so forth and they were also tracking eye movements. This
person is lying fast asleep in the basement of the psychology Stanford
department… they noticed that his physical eyes were tracking left right, left
right, in a very methodical fashion. They’d never seen this before. So, they
woke him up and said, “What were you just dreaming about?” I think within
one minute you're going to guess. It's either ping-pong or tennis, right?
[Laughter]
It was ping-pong. He was watching ping-pong match. [Laughter]
Well low and behold they discovered right then… and who saw this coming?
That your dream eyes, the eyes in your head, inside the dream which are not
physical eyes at, the tracking of your dream eyes exactly responds to the
movements of your eyeballs in your head. So, move your eyes left in the
dream, and your eyeballs move. The light bulb went on above Stephen LaBerge’s
head and he said, I have an idea. By that time, he’d had maybe a
thousand lucid dreams. He could them every night because of training. Now
he said, “I’ve got an experiment we can run.” It would give you objective
evidence that people do have lucid dreams. No one who’d had what a lucid
dream needed that, but people who don't needed some remedial work. So, we
did was, he went into the sleeping lab and before he went to sleep he said,
“When I become lucid, I'm going to move my eyes to the left three times I'm
going to pause and move them to the left again”. In other words, that washes
out any sort of statistical random chance. So, we did that. They tracked his
eyeballs in his head and that became a scientific paper: Lucid Dreaming
Revealed. I refer to him because he's written a number of very good books
and it’s not from any kind of religious context at all. Buddhism is very strong
in dream yoga. I’ve written about that. I teach it commonly. He approached it
from a secular perspective simply as a scientist and came up with some very
ingenious methods that are accessible and helps people start having with
lucid dreams. I'll just give you the cue…the first thing which is: increase your
dream recall. How do you do that? By paying better attention. As soon as you
wake up, have that be the first thought you have when you wake up. What
was your last memory? Start developing dream recall and the reason for that
is: if you can't remember your dreams, even if you you have a lucid one, you
won't remember it.
>> That’s very funny. So, you using the word “lucid”. What is the relationship
between the word “lucid” and “aware”? Are they the same?
>> The term lucid, here, is a good choice. In this context, it is not only being
aware, it's also being aware that you're aware. In a non-lucid dream, you're
perfectly aware there are people, situations, the body, your feelings and so
forth. What you are not aware of, is the fact that this is all a dream. You're not
aware of things as they are. In a similar fashion, we get caught in a non-lucid
or quasi-lucid dream of thought or rumination, we very often conflate the
mental events with the reference of the mental events. I could be sitting here,
rumination tends to be negative by definition, I can be thinking here about
someone who ripped me off some years ago and cheated me and was really
betraying my trust. I can start thinking about that get really upset and really
making myself angry. What I’ve done here is, I’ve conflated these memories
and images coming to my head with the actual person who does nothing to
me who right now may be feeding her puppy some milk. Totally unrelated.
But that's not being aware. I'm caught up in thought. This is the downside of
mind wandering. We get caught in a semi-conscious flow of thinking very
similar to a non-lucid dream.
>> So in a sense, when we talk meditation about how you're trying …
when you're focusing on awareness, you're trying to
become aware of your thoughts to bear witness to those thoughts, pop up a
level so that you're thinking about what you’re thinking about. At least that's
what Marvin…. the computer people like to use the word thinking, but you
become aware of the thinking so that you… the higher you go the more you
become a witness and so in that sense… I guess two questions. What's the
relationship between learning how to meditate and learning to have lucid
dream? And also, is lucid dreaming similar to the kind of awareness they are
trying to achieve when your meditating?
>> The word meditation in Buddhism and many other traditions has tremendous
array. It’s like saying: Tell me about the scientific method.
And, of course, it's an uninformed question.
There's a wide variety but of course we look at these types of meditation that
are really designed to yield insight, to make actually discovery from the first-
person perspective that… in that regard there's definitely a strong parallel. To
not be diluted. Do not be unaware. Do not be diluted. In the lucid dream, it is
going from an aware state you're aware of what's in the dream. and not
aware that it is a dream likewise, in a waking state, we’re aware of our
thoughts and emotions but the cognitive fusion tends to take place and it
really is a subjective bias. Identifying with thoughts we are not aware of
them. The attention is riveted off to the reference of the thoughts
>> It seems like a lot of the non-lucid thinking,
so there's a lot of work on deception and there's a lot of work
on self-deception and one of the papers I read that I
found fascinating is… they make you hear voices. Some of them your own.
Some of them other people's and depending on your psychological position
you will attribute some of your voice to others or conversely, the other voices
your own and they have to do the confidence levels or something like that.
They measure galvanic skin response, which is closely tied your
subconscious. Even if you are unaware of whose voice it is. your
subconscious knows. So, here's a case where your subconscious knows the
truth or some value of the truth, but your conscience is being deceived. I
think that a lot of and most of our thoughts are the self-deceptions that we
have. They allow us to have a dissemblance of confidence in a world where
we rationally shouldn’t be confident. You need a certain level of confidence in
order to get anything done. You need to filter in order to get things done. In a
way, if you were completely aware, we'd all be sitting meditating on a
mountain and nothing would get done. I guess the trade-off of being
completely aware in some people's mind. I think some of the criticism of
Buddhism is if you're sitting around, and you’re focused inward all the time,
are you actually doing anything? What does doing anything mean? There's
two questions. Is self-deception the thing that sort of the opposite of lucid
and awareness? And, how important is self-deception for our sanity or
productivity or whatever society…I’ll ask the other question later .
>> They are very dense and interrelated questions
I’ll come back to your other point, which segues into the other issues
you raise that is: again, when I was studying cognitive psychology,
which is this an intro course but I did get introduced to it,
one mental phenomenon that really struck me for is
absence. The term mental perception. We have five modes of perception and
we speak of the mind in remembering, in thinking, in all kind of business. It's
missing something really obvious. When you're having a dream whether it's
lucid or not lucid, you're not thinking about the people you're not think about
the appearances, the sounds you're perceiving them. You're perceiving them
you're perceiving the colors in your dream you're perceiving the sounds that
you hear, you're perceiving the emotions that are arising. Its perceptions are
not inferences. As much as my perceiving the color your shirt. The fact that
that can be overlooked I thought could be quite astonishing because it’s
faculty that we do have but it never even got mentioned in the entire
textbook. That's bizarre. It's not only bizarre, but it's important in the sense
that we have the five physical senses. Although these can be marvelously
extended with technology a telescope for eyes and so forth… in terms of
exercises to improve your sight… can I do some exercise that I can improve
my eyesight so that I can see with 8x power magnification? … so, I can hear
like a dog? No. It's very limited. So, people can develop…wine connoisseurs
develop their gustatory senses and so forth. But it actually is limited. When it
comes the sixth sense… and we’re not speaking of something that's a cult, or
mysterious or paranormal, just our faculty of mental perception by which we
observed dreams, but also mental imagery and so forth this out of sixth
perception. This is one that actually can be refined and extended to an extra
ordinary degree. Only a few sits down and implement them. That's within
meditation. So, there is one point. [Crosstalk] Now you can segue to the
second point you made… might… can just give me a reminder?
>> I'll play from yours, let's say okay…
I understand that you have a method for
increasing your awareness and your mental ability. Is that something that we
should all do? Isn't self-deception necessary to protect ourselves? I mean I'm
asking if there is sort of a… a lot of people may not turn out well if they’re
aware is that true or…
>> The words themselves without even thinking about it, self-deception
can be helpful in the following ways: finish the sentence… I can't…
I just don't think that ignorance is bliss for the long term maybe for the
short term. So, no I just figure that deception is not to be helpful, period.
>> Let me push back on that a little bit. In normal society,
if we are at dinner and you say, “oh, how is the food?”
and you say, “I'm just full”. And we’re polite company… I say “okay”.
If you said what you really thought. which was, “It was terrible”,
that actually allows the evening without to go on without much problem.
A certain amount of deception … and actually there's some studies …
if you ask people to identify liars on a video- they can’t. But, if you also to
identify those people were thinking hard they will pick out the liars. So, we
have the ability to find liars, but for some reason we haven't developed our
brain in a way that we tend to find liars. We don't like to know. Society actually
runs better when your gullible. We have a bunch of gullible people. as long as
you don't have more than a certain percentage of bad factors it turns out
things are… We probably wouldn't have many babies.
>> You’re making me fearful and trembling.
>> I'm arguing the side of a lot of people who believe that deception
is a fundamental piece of how the brain and society works.
You can remove it, but what happens when you start to remove it? So,
lawyers and policemen they tend to be people who train themselves to blast
past their self-deception and identify those bad guys. They tend to be
unhappy, they tend to not be married for very long, there's a whole cost that
they pay for eliminating this field of sub deception. So, obviously if you're a
monk living in an ashram, you can afford to be extremely aware. I'm sort of
arguing with myself because… There's a lot to be said about… for people who
aren't in the right condition, that without self-deception there going to become miserable.
>> This is a very interesting point. But, first, I’m going to whisk off the table
the first point. If you and I actually go out with a group of friends were
having dinner at some place you recommended, for example when
I just don't care for the food, it's not a matter of deception because
we’re both courteous and wise people but you don't expect me to be bluntly
truthful. “The food was just awful. Why did you recommend this place?”.
Because if you do that it is not hopeful. At some point when we’re not at the
table and I just say afterwards, “Maybe we give that place a pass next time”.
That's enough. You know everything from that statement. I think it's not
deception. It's kind of the rules of courtesy. There's somethings you don't
need to say, but in not saying them and you're not deceiving anybody. And
this goes for complementing people on their appearance and so forth.
>> I'm sure when you get complimented,
I'm sure that the person… even when you're saying it completely to be polite
I'm sure the recipient thinks it's a little bit truer than you intended.
It is a little bit of self-deception there.
>> It could be. It also depends on the relationship.
You know is it is a relationship… I think we can move on from that.
The notion of self-deception. Let's go back to non-lucid dreaming.
In a non- lucid dream, you're fundamentally deceived. I think
Freud said that you’re basically in a psychotic state when you're having a non-
lucid dream because you've done everything wrong. You don't know that your
lifespan may be five minutes. You don’t know that you’re going to be done in
minutes and you're going to be existing nowhere. So, there is self-deception
but it also makes one very vulnerable to suffering because of that. For the
people… I spoke with a student of mine a couple months back and she was
having a very lucid dream and somebody very threatening came to her with a
knife - very threatening. She, being lucid, she took the man's hand with a knife
and it she plunged into her abdomen.
>> And then what happened?
>> No pain. No fear. She's lucid. she's putting a dream knife
into a dream abdomen there's no molecules on the knife or abdomen.
She disarmed him by doing the worst he could do to her…
she did it to herself. So, I'd have to say that, as a matter of principle,
I don't think in the long run self-deception is not going to be helpful.
You gave me fear and trembling when you said it would be good
for society to be gullible. That's exactly what totalitarian dictatorships would
say. “Trust me. Trust me. If I mislead you is for your own good. Trust me. I
will make sure that you don't get any of the information that I don’t want you
to hear”. That's how you control people. That's not how you liberate people. It
makes for a false stability and sooner or later the computer geeks are going
to find out every possible loophole… and that shutting down the Internet I
think we all know the countries that we’re talking about. So now, it's an
unstable equilibrium.
>> That's actually the answer I would have given. I do think that
for a certain kind of equilibrium it is safe but in the long run is not
as robust as like the matrix. Green pill/red pill type of thing.
>> the truth shall set you free the pretty good aphorism but you make…
You really just touched my heart when you spoke of police and
other people in that type of work whether or not to be deceived.
Watching the seedier side but unfortunately seeing that relentlessly.
They never go out and pick up nice people. They never go to a
loving mother and say, we want to take you in for questioning.
>> Well. unless they’re bad guys.
>> But this is the point that… I don't think we can ever have too much truth.
Because the truth…the opposite is ignorance or delusion and in the long
time not hopeful. Where meditation comes in, is balance.
It's very much a matter of balance. That's as we’re developing our
cognitive abilities, we should also be developing our empathetic capacity.
With that, as we open the heart along with the mind, we can start handling
more and more truth. The heart is open. We’re not seeing simply good guys
bad guys, my side your side, but we’re seeing more empathetically. So, there's
a couple of layers but there's a simple question which is: often I talk about
the difference between art and design as…art is anything as long as it’s not
useful. And sciences and engineering are focused on utility. You’re not
supposed to ask scientists why they are studying. We talk about your work in
lucid dreaming and … this work, it sounds a lot like science… But, when you
think about the Dalai Lama… while the work that people do is also trying to
change society so there's an impact element. Often, we talk about bringing
religion into academic environments this somewhat implementation or
impact-oriented side of religion is also the one that side is viewed as
negative. It's often got wrong. So, I'm curious how you think about the role of
Buddhism and meditation and your work, both in terms of its relationship to
science, and also in terms of…. are you trying to actually… Would you say are
trying to impact the world through outcomes or more impact science through
understanding or some combination?
>> The 1st person I like impact is myself.
I spent something like 30 to 40,000 hours in meditation over the last
44 years. The aspiration was, not that I want to change science or propagate
Buddhism… it actually wasn't. It was really out of an existential aspiration.
Inner aspiration. It was very simple I'd like to live a life that is true and
meaningful. So, don't my life to be based on happy delusions. I don't think I’d
be happy long-term. I'm not willing to… Capable actually I would've followed
my career in science which I was planning from the age of 13… I'm not
satisfied I'm really, from my core I'm not satisfied to be living in accord with a
lot of facts. There's also the word meaning, it has meaning. There's a
difference between a meaningful life and meaningless life. I think we have
the capacity to do both or either. I want my life to be meaningful but I also
want my life to be truthful. So, meditation practice is really designed to do
that. Times we’re on first-person experience and of course Ive studied
physics collaborated extensively with scientists…. I’d like to know what's true.
Some truths are more easily accessible by the scientist’s perspectives. Other
truths are more scientifically accessible. Bringing us together… And so, I think
the more in alignment we are in with the truth, the greater capacity we have, t
he greater chance we have of living a happy, meaningful life. The meaning
has to be something more than just finding a lot of facts. There it is the word
meaning, the very word meaning, it's not a scientific question. But it is a
meaningful question. It has to be answered outside of those parameters of
science Buddhism has multiple…I 'll make this short because I know our time
is short… but there's no question that there are elements of a Buddhism that
are simply religion. You look out say, that's what Christians do. In Taoism it's
very religious. Ceremonies, beliefs hierarchies…
the question it’s there. In this one particular tradition of Buddhism, there is
an enormously rich philosophical heritage that's not religion. If you debate
some of the great philosophers of Buddhism…Nagarjuna, Chandra Kirti,
Dharma Kirti and so on you just meet there right on the same playing
ground with Socrates, with Wittgenstein and for forth. That’s where they
are talking and there's no holds barred. We’re talking reason here. We’re
looking for empirical evidence and so it's straight Philosophy, and that's
been from the beginning, it was not something adopted from outside but
there's this third element that I find most intriguing from the beginning this
radical empirical element of Buddhist inquiry that has no technology. The
Buddhist civilization basically didn’t develop anything technologically.
That's not where their interest was directed. What they did to develop
something technological…which is refining our attention skills and our
metacognitive skills. Those to a high very, very high degree unmatched in
Western civilization. That's a truly scientific portion of it. I am not saying
Buddhism is science. I just think it has scientific elements and interface
there coming as a Buddhist with a lot of exposure to Western civilization
including science and philosophy, there's no question in my mind that the
Buddhist tradition of the 21st century can be… and I would love it to be
enriched by modern physics, neuroscience, psychology and also Western
philosophy. It can be enriched. We can continue to evolve because over the
last 2,500 years, as you must know, in Buddhism in Japan …Japanese
Buddhism is very Japanese and Tibetan Buddhism very Tibetan. Thai
Buddhism, very Thai. That's what should happen there… assimilated into
the culture. But now Buddhism has gone global so can Buddhism still
adapt and involve almost …like a living organism to the changing
environment. We can highlight these points of contact with Western
philosophy in Western science and global science. So, there's one way and
that's happening a lot now but again when we think about Buddhism as a
religion, we blind ourselves to the fact that in fact, and I will say this is a
fact, there are many deep transformative discoveries that have been made
by contemplatives too, but in 20, 40, 60,000 hours of training like a really
good neuroscientist and they’ve replicated that among themselves. In
terms of the fool on the hill the monk or the yogi who goes often to
solitude. Because that's our final point and I’ll address that briefly. In fact,
what about Einstein? What did he ever produce? When was offered a job, I
just read his marvelous biography, the recent one by… it was a wonderful
one I want to try to get his name… it was recent. When he was offered a
position I think it was University of Berlin, he was asked, Prof. Einstein…
what kind of work lab do you want? Well he said how about a pad paper, a
pencil and a big wastepaper basket from my mistakes. So what good is
he? This funny haired looking man, sitting in his room coming up with
equations, after equations and that's all he does. He’s come up with a
bunch of theories. He wasn’t that great a dad or a husband because he
was so much this. The practical applications of both of quantum
mechanics and relativity theory cannot be measured, but is not quite the
same for contemplatives and I've known some whose 20,30 years of
solitude… what are they doing? Not just sitting there being aware of the
present moment, which is nice, but it's enormously more sophisticated
than that. There are different ways of phrasing, but here's one way that is
not wrong. These people if their motivations authentic and it's actually can
be altruistic they are going and in so they can come out and be of much
greater service than they could have when they went in. What they’re doing
is single-mindedly seeking to cultivate exceptional degrees of sanity. It
means heightened awareness of all kinds. Of the environment, of their own
mental states heightened. As the heightened awareness of dreamless
sleep and taking this implicit awareness, which is there in your deepest
sleep, and making it explicit. Also cultivating in their heart that cultivating
compassion and loving kindness empathy and when they do come out they
will come out as bearers of light. Instead of simply being part of the
problem. So, if you look at medical training for example… 6-8 years of being
a pretty useless human being, I think. If you’re a spouse, you’re not much of
a spouse, if you parent your kind of a part-time parent… In 6-8 years what a
waste of air you are. Eating a lot of food and producing all of these waste
products, what have you done? The answer is, in 6-8 years, not much. But
when you come out can you be of greater service than you came in… If
that's not true for the yogi, if the yogi has not undergone some meaningful
transformation so that he or she is able to be of much greater service, then
going in that was a waste of time. To end on this point, there are hedonic
and undemonic benefits. Hedonic is for our material well-being for our
good health for education for productivity in the world for technology and
all this. Science has been a terrific success. Science and technology a
terrific success. Science providing the knowledge and technology finding
the practical applications for that knowledge. I had to walk in California
here in all that nobody needs to talk about it. It is hedonic. For all the
growth of science and technology, are we living more meaningful lives than
we did? I think it would be a tough sell. More knowledge, yes, but one of the
great ironies, and it's kind of an enigma, the 20th century is that there was
a century in all human history we learned more in one century quite
possibly than all the preceding centuries combined, The 20th century quite
remarkable growth of science and technology absolutely without parallel.
And then we should pause. The 20th century the time when there was the
greatest inhumanity man against man, the greatest environmental
degradation in the whole of human history, and the wiping out of more
species than the whole of human history. So, we knew more, but we were
being suicidal. That tendency is not slowing down in the 21st century. So,
facts, yes. Meaning, no. Facts, yes. Ethics, no. Fax, yes. Compassion and
larger wisdom no. So, science is not producing the goods there. It was
never designed to do so we just have to recognize, I believe… what are the
limits here? Not to put it down but what are the limits? Science is not
making us more compassionate ethical or wise. It was not designed to do
so. Step outside and are other types of disciplines in viewing reality. They
can give you a greater long-term vision of wisdom, of meaning and so forth
that's why I want to engage us in coming up with a practice that you
withdraw temporarily with the anticipation and motivation from the first
moment and withdraw for a time being. I'm going to be useless for a while
so that when I come back I can be of much greater benefit. If you look at
the revolution throughout history the Bolshevik revolution the French
Revolution and so many others, the people who are revolting are carrying
within themselves, the same problems of the people the people they are r
evolting against. So, out with Czar, in with the Bolsheviks. Out with the
Czar, in with Stalin. Exactly what was the progress? And so, that’s why
before we try to initiate a revolution it might be good to do initiate it internally.
>> So, I have a lot of questions but that's a very good place to pivot
to questions from the audience... ShaoShao… do we have a mic?
Social media people if there's any twitter stuff…
>> Hi, I'm Shaoshao, I'm a PhD student in tangible media group.
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the role
of artistic practices in tapping into other experience of consciousness.
I'm a pianist myself so I study a lot into this. There are stories
that I encounter of pianists for instance Arthur Rubinstein, who
discusses how when he's performing onstage he can actually sends the
person in the audience who's listening the most closely and he plays just
for this person and another thought that's kind of related to this, is that you
talk about the dichotomy of science and meditative practices… but I
actually feel like you can see it is sort of a tripod where the science, arts,
and spiritual practices are always finding and articulating different sorts of
truth, they constitute different things as truth but they also have different
ways of expressing the truth. In a final sort of related thought is about… So,
both science and the arts have product results that you either make as
ideas and experiences or objects in the world…and I feel like meditative
practices are sort of more focused on cultivating the internal state rather
than the external product and perhaps that's maybe the reason why our
values of our transactional world it's hard to reconcile the
acting/overthinking aspect of it. I don't know. Comment on any of that, but
especially parts about the arts
>> Sure. No, that's a very interesting bouquet of questions
and themes you raise. First of all, I agree with
everything you said in that it is not just science and meditation I never
thought of those as somehow being an exclusive set of categories. Okay
now we covered everything: science and meditation… so clearly not true.
The artistic element is a very interesting one. we just made this
connection. When you're in a lucid dream, when you're in lucid dream… then
you're aware of the fact that everything you're experiencing is a free
creation of your own mind. In other words, it's a work of art. Good art…. bad
art but it is still a free creation. It is a spontaneous immediate creation of
your mind where you don't have to put it in canvas or stone or anything also
as with music also. So, there you are as an artist already, one of the first
things you discovered a lucid dream is how malleable it is. You can start to
shift it, that you can shape it, you can shape-shift yourself in the dream.
You can go to another gender you go to other species and so forth so
there's a work of art in progress if you're lucid. If you're not lucid, then it’s
just happening to you. It's not hard it's just something happening to you are
basically the victim of it. There's an expression of art- internal art… it would
be wonderful if one day they could find a brain hook up where you actually
display that for everybody else to see. I don't see that coming soon. I think
there's a reciprocal relationship here between artistic creativity and
meditation. True artistic inquiry through… simply the creation of art, can
this give insight into nature of minds, illuminous aspects of the mind and
other aspects of reality. I have no questions about that at all. definitely yes.
Here's something I found from my own meditation. When I engage in this
type of practice I alluded to earlier, fairly briefly, just resting the awareness
in its own state… just being clear and cognizant… not thinking about
anything, but simply being present and observing thoughts, images,
memories and so forth simply arising and passing, arising and passing… In
so doing what I found, if I do it for many hours a day for days on end, is that
it taps into the awareness. It kind of settles it becomes to begin to descend
so to speak. Of course, I am speaking a bit metaphorically. It descends to a
deeper dimension of awareness that is not so crystallized. when I was
studying advanced mechanics, studying calculus, studying Sanskrit at the
same time, I'm caught up in a mesh, a very complex conceptual construct.
There is a certain rigidity and that when you're working on advanced
mechanics problem- that's not exactly fluid. You need to take it step by
step by step. I was working through Sanskrit grammar it's very orderly it's
kind of locked in, right? So, this analytical thinking going from here to there,
here there, but when you soften up you loosen up you melt your awareness
into a state that's not verbalized, not locked into conceptualization… You go
into kind of a state of awareness that…what I say is plasma-like. It's not
already crystallized. It is not formed. It’s like a Plenum of creativity. You
release into that and then sparks almost like arcs of creativity come. My
gift is not for visual arts much, but I have gifts in other areas: a little bit of
music and philosophy and so forth. What I found, again and again, when I
would do that is… When I'd settle and I'd release…There are like two electric
rods and then seeing an arc electricity coming from one-to-one
connections will be arising spontaneously when I’m in that kind of fluid
state. My creativity went from where my gifts are. If it were you, I would
imagine, I would speculate that when you do rest in a similar state that the
arcs of creativity will be in the area you are gifted in. Your artistic
endeavors may illuminate that level of consciousness by slipping into that
dimension of consciousness. This also gave rise to great creativity. In arts
and music in mathematics and science and Einstein himself said for his
own creativity and he was very creative individual that as he was very good
at introspection. He had a clear sense of where his ideas were coming
from. He commented, I paraphrase, the spark of creativity, the initial insight
was not articulate. It was not in concepts or words it was something prior
to that It rose up, came to his consciousness and then he had to struggle.
He had to find the words for it, then alone the mathematics, but that was
derivative. The insight something on a more primal level – and I would
suggest it’s coming from the deeper dimension. His occurred were his was
gifted. I see this is as an interplay. If we look into classical Indian
civilization in its golden era, something like 1,500 hundred years ago
something like that. You have these great monastic universities in India like
Nalanda, which about the Dali Lama speaks very often, and they had that
kind of a matrix of knowledge, unlike modern universities, which…
disciplines all over the place. Often, it was a not a whole lot of relationship,
not a lot of dialogue either. Everybody encapsulated in their own walls, you
know? Because in India, you have five fields of knowledge of… Central
knowledge, which is inner knowledge. They consider this the most central
type of knowledge for human beings to aspire to. It is the nature of their
own minds. Know that- because at the center of your world, your mind, your
presence, that is in the center of your world. Look in all directions- you
know who is in the center. Understand your mind. And then, we care about
our suffering we care about the suffering of others we care about our joys
and happiness and so through this inner knowledge to identify through very
careful investigation: what are the true causes of suffering? It's not just
other people. They may catalyze it, they may not. What are the true causes
of suffering? To be found within. What are the true cause of happiness also
to be found within… So very in-depth very textured, multilayered, multi-perspectival
approach to studying the mind and consciousness itself. Then
you have four derivative fields of knowledge. One of these is medicine. A
person may meditate a great deal and then manifest whatever insight and
it will flow out into medicine. That's one. Another one is called the
knowledge of making so this breaks down the division between art and
technology. It can be making a mandala, it can be making a bridge, or pot,
or a painting. It's making. Its creativity. Your meditation may flower into
creativity. In the third one: logic. clear thinking, mathematical, qualitative,
philosophical thinking that was the third one. The fourth one is sort of a
mysterious called the knowledge of sound. That has to do with grammar,
but also has to do with music and sound in general. It was a whole
discipline in of itself but the idea that you come into the center you come
into the dept. You try to fathom the nature of your mind, tap into the
wellsprings of creativity and then depending on your inclinations,
predispositions, gifts, talents, then the creativity will flow out into one or
more of those secondary fields of knowledge. Then they all flow into to the
center as well… like a fountain. Four fountains flowing into one. One
fountain flowing into the other four.
>> And I think we have time for one more question, and there's one from twitter.
So, I'll have Stacy read it.
>> Is it on? Oh,now it's on. This is a question from Keya Lou Fox
who sent this in from Seattle. Could you speak to the validity of
intersubjectivity as a collective consciousness? Is there science behind it?
>> The collective unconsciousness as apposite by Jung?
I don't know of any rigorous science that would corroborate that belief.
It's an interesting hypothesis I know that Jung had his own notes of unconscious.
I don't know any rigorous studies that have been done of it.
At the same time, I don't dismiss it.
Number one: not all my truths are validated by science. For
example, the fact that I have consciousness at all, is not validated by
science. But I am very aware that it’s true. A collective unconscious… I
Jung approached that by way of the archetypal forms that appear in
dreams and so forth. In that regard, is there a sublayer something shared? I
like the word intersubjective a lot. I think it has enormous implications and
reality to it that we, not only are individual streams of consciousness, but
our consciousness is entangled in very meaningful ways especially when
there's a group endeavor. A group of mathematicians, a group of
meditators, the society for neuroscience. That's definitely a lot of collective
consciousness taking place there. So, how deep does it go? I think it can
be researched. It should be researched but I'm not sure it can be effectively
by looking outside, by studying brains and behavior. If it can be researched,
I think would be by turning inwards in a very professional, sophisticated
fashion. Probing through the layers and layers of our psyche, which are
individuated. Rising independence in our brain, cultural language, history
penetrating through that it can be done. It's a lot of hard work sitting quietly
and meditating. But if one penetrates through this individuated,
conditioned consciousness of our own individual minds streams, can one
tap into a dimension of consciousness that is intersubjective? My answer
is yes. Can it be demonstrated scientifically? I would say not if you exclude
the meditators. If you just studying a brain and behavior of interviewing
people, I don't think so. My dream here, and I’ll end on this note, I'm actually i
n the process of helping to create, I can’t do it by myself, a network of
contemplative research facilities. There is nothing like in the world right
now. Where we bring together, highly qualified, well-trained, neuroscientists,
psychologists, even physicists, potentially people from other branches,
including the arts. With one criteria: please be open-minded that's all we
ask but were not asking you to adopt any belief system but bring into the
same facility people are looking. Who are looking for training and
contemplative practice or for people who are highly trained, a training
facility and a research facility so people can put in 5, 10, 15,000 hours of
very rigorous contemplative training, but they will be monitored by
psychologists by neuroscientists watching. What's happening in the brain?
How does it manifest and behavior is as good for you? If you spend 5,000
hours in solitude, does it make you kind of weirdo? Does it make you a
damaged human being? Or is it actually healthy? Scientist can help there.
Having one facility where opened minded contemplatives, not dogma
bound by any religion, but open-minded really wanting to know what's true
in the same, the same place, the same facility as well-trained scientists
and with the spirit of interdisciplinary cross-cultural mutual respect wishing
to learn from each other… I think that way with that kind of vision, we could
have a much richer, multidimensional understanding of the mind and
consciousness than the contemplatives on their own can come up with,
but with no brain science or behavioral science. Or the scientists can come
up with, with no rigorous training in introspection. I think that's the way of
the future and I'm basically investing the rest of my life to try to make that happen.
>> Perfect. Perfect ending because I think that the spirit of the media Lab
we use the word anti-disciplinary. Which is things that don't fit in
traditional disciplines because they are either because they are between or
they are beyond the disciplines. I think the work that you're doing and the
fact that you're approaching in such a scientific way trying to bring the…
Traditionally science and those… They poked each other but not very
productively and I think it’s really fertile ground whether we are talking
about neuroscience or wellness. I really appreciate you sharing your
thoughts with us and I hope that we can connect somehow with your
research network which you’re developing.
>> I would love to, and thank you for this opportunity.
>> Thank you very much. Thank you.
[Applause]