When Consciousness is Discussed, Intelligent People Become Idiots

A few days ago, I spent 45 minutes watching on YouTube a program hosted by Prof. Brian Greene, a top-notch physicist and mathematician, in World Science Festival. The format is discursive with two high level philosopher and neuroscientist, the guest-discussants jumping between philosophy and neuroscience with a lot of neurons, synapses thrown in for good measure. It is possible that the undefined and useless word “soul” was thrown in somewhere, but it must have slipped by me.

It was all blah-blah-and more blah all through, you can see it for yourself here. The neuroscientist did throw in the phrase, “emergent property”. So good of him.

Now, I take you back a few years to a conference on neuroscience to which the Dalai Lama was invited and it was accepted. This rubbed the scientists the wrong way like sand paper does. “Why in the world would you invite a so-called ‘spiritualist’ when we are going to discuss the materialism and working of the brain/mind.”

By the end of the seminar, the Dalai Lama’s presence was acknowledged to have been useful in the seminar, if my memory serves me correctly. He may have showed how one can figure out that one’s own mind is going through multiple changes while practicing meditation.

As an aside, this is the source of the “Mindfulness” business; leave it to Americans to create profit out of nothing and, as mind is undefined, it is nothing, and profits continue to accrue to the “Mindfulness” gurus! Well this was about the Buddha. What about his predecessor who abjured “Brahmanical” teachings – Mahavira?

Followers of Mahavira (named Jains) are all over India. There are many temples in which we still can see idols of Goddess of Education and other Gods of the Hindu pantheon. I have visited these temples and felt very confused when I was in Kanchipuram (once upon a time a major center of Jainism teachings) where I spent four years of schooling and one year of college. Later, much later, did I come to know that Jainism was against the teachings of Brahmins, the highest caste in Hindu society. Jainism did not reject rebirth but showed the way to avoid rebirth, and why – the cruel punishment one has to face in Hell . He also, as I understand it, did not emphasize soul. Many of my schoolmates were Jains.

The Buddha just took that one step further. The Buddha was an empiricist – you see, hear, smell, taste, touch – and nothing more. The combinations of the above in ways so many that are even beyond the imaginable, let alone infinity (itself undefinable). No one can tell me that the stench from the toilet I respond to is precisely the same that another person would respond to. This has a word, just another word, qualia. Buddha did not just invent a word: he introduced the importance of studying one’s own experiences.

Yet, I do think The Buddha erred when he asked his disciple to lay his head towards the north, when he realized that he is truly near death. He must have had his own superstition! What are you saying, the Buddha might have entertained superstitious thoughts? Yes. I treat the Buddha as a human being who elevated himself above the level of the mortals, yet was a mortal. Yet, this mortality is what endears the Buddha to me, even leaving aside the error. He was just like me, except for his intelligence and persistence that led him to enlightenment. I am nowhere near him (note the lowercase ‘h’). I do not treat him as God, even as an incarnate.

To get back to the debate and the seminar I have referred, the Buddha remained unmentioned and undiscussed in one and in the other perhaps one of the world’s foremost Buddhist teachers was discredited because it did not recognize the empiricism of the Buddha, while claiming science is an exercise in empiricism. Tut, tut ...

The title of this post came to me after the write-up. People were blind to the pure empiricism – doing scientific experiments and validating or otherwise the hypothesis that led to them – only because they could not see through their own blindfolds. They became idiots. They discussed consciousness without grounding it somewhere, anywhere.

The Buddha showed that the anchor for anyone’s consciousness lies within that individual. This empiricism is almost existentialism – you come alive through your actions, or your actions define who you are.

Raghuram Ekambaram