Bring4th

Quote:You're not the same: Neuroscience backs up the Buddhist belief  that “the self” isn’t constant, but ever-changing

Olivia Goldhill

While you may not remember life as a toddler, you most likely believe that your selfhood then—your essential being—was intrinsically the same as it is today.

Buddhists, though, suggest that this is just an illusion—a philosophy that’s increasingly supported by scientific research.

“Buddhists argue that nothing is constant, everything changes through time, you have a constantly changing stream of consciousness,” Evan Thompson, a philosophy of mind professor at the University of British Columbia, tells Quartz. “And from a neuroscience perspective, the brain and body is constantly in flux. There’s nothing that corresponds to the sense that there’s an unchanging self.”

Neuroscience and Buddhism came to these ideas independently, but some scientific researchers have recently started to reference and draw on the Eastern religion in their work—and have come to accept theories that were first posited by Buddhist monks thousands of years ago.

One neuroscience paper, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences in July, links the Buddhist belief that our self is ever-changing to physical areas of the brain. There’s scientific evidence that “self-processing in the brain is not instantiated in a particular region or network, but rather extends to a broad range of fluctuating neural processes that do not appear to be self specific,” write the authors.

Thompson, whose work includes studies of cognitive science, phenomenology and Buddhist philosophy, says this is not the only area where neuroscience and Buddhism converge. For example, some neuroscientists now believe that cognitive faculties are not fixed but can be trained through meditation. And there may be scientific backing to the Buddhist belief that consciousness extends into deep sleep.

“The standard neuroscience view is that deep sleep is a blackout state where consciousness disappears,” Thompson says. “In Indian philosophy we see some theorists argue that there’s a subtle awareness that continues to be present in dreamless sleep, there’s just a lack of ability to consolidate that in a moment-to-moment way in memory.”

Studies of meditators’ sleep patterns suggest this might indeed be the case. A study published in 2013 found that meditation can affect electro-physical brain patterns during sleep, and the findings suggest there could be capacity to “process information and maintain some level of awareness, even during a state when usually these cognitive functions are greatly impaired,” according to the researchers.

But neither neuroscience nor Buddhism has a definitive answer on exactly how consciousness relates to the brain. And the two fields diverge on certain aspects of the topic. Buddhists believe that there’s some form of consciousness that’s not dependent on the physical body, while neuroscientists (and Thompson), disagree.

But Thompson supports the Buddhists’ view that the self does in fact exist.

“In neuroscience, you’ll often come across people who say the self is an illusion created by the brain. My view is that the brain and the body work together in the context of our physical environment to create a sense of self. And it’s misguided to say that just because it’s a construction, it’s an illusion.”

Source: Quartz, September 20, 2015

The article content and thread title don't match. What is the relationship between “self-processing in the brain is not instantiated in a particular region or network, but rather extends to a broad range of fluctuating neural processes that do not appear to be self specific,” and "the self"?

Neuroscience cannot make any claims about "the self" for the same reason that studying the chemical composition of the brain can tell you nothing about "the self". It's the wrong level of analysis.

To get a better sense of why, read anything by Ken Wilber.

To me, much more interesting than whether they can prove anything (or even make any claims whatsoever about it), is the fact that even mainstream science seems to finally be getting interested in metaphysical and other 'non-scientific' questions.

Like science keeps searching for a smallest particle, but they will never find it.

When I was an atheist, I believed that consciousness is created by complex, mechanistic electrochemical reactions in the brain.

After I woke up, I believed that consciousness was almost entirely outside the body 'remotely controlling' the body/brain.

Now I am starting to believe it is somewhere in the middle (both are true):

Quote:30.3 Questioner: Upon our physical death, as we call it, from this particular density and this particular incarnative experience, we lose this chemical body. Immediately after the loss of this chemical body do we maintain a different type of body? Is there still a mind/body/spirit complex at that point?

Ra: I am Ra. This is correct. The mind/body/spirit complex is quite intact; the physical body complex you now associate with the term body being but manifestation of a more dense and intelligently informed and powerful body complex.

30.4 Questioner: Is there any loss to the mind or spirit after this transition which we call death or any impairment of either because of the loss of this chemical body that we now have?

Ra: I am Ra. In your terms there is a great loss of mind complex due to the fact that much of the activity of a mental nature of which you are aware during the experience of this space/time continuum is as much of a surface illusion as is the chemical body complex.

In other terms nothing whatever of importance is lost; the character or, shall we say, pure distillation of emotions and biases or distortions and wisdoms, if you will, becoming obvious for the first time, shall we say; these pure emotions and wisdoms and bias/distortions being, for the most part, either ignored or underestimated during physical life experience.

In terms of the spiritual, this channel is then much opened due to the lack of necessity for the forgetting characteristic of third density.

Edit: I am referring to consciousness / the mind in 3rd density.