- seCtIon sIx: seLF AnD otHeR
modulated by further steps leading to the next states in the series. Far from invok-
ing occult ideas, Brasington speculates that these states may depend upon a cas-
cade of several neurotransmitters, and he takes part in research designed to link
the unfolding sequence of altered states with the underlying physiology (Hagerty
et al., 2013). He teaches these skills very much in the tradition of ‘If you do X, you
will experience Y’, holding out the hope that future research will uncover the rea-
sons why doing X leads reliably to experiencing Y.
American philosopher William Mikulas agrees that an important reason for the
dialogue between science and Buddhism is that it focuses on methods not doc-
trines. He describes essential Buddhism as having ‘no creeds or dogmas, no rituals
or worship, no saviour, and nothing to take on faith; rather it is a set of practices
and free inquiry by which one sees for oneself the truth and usefulness of the
teachings’ (2007, p. 6). Many other scholars make similar points and, like Mikulas,
refer to ‘essential Buddhism’ as though this can easily be extracted from all the
later accretions and different sects, but we should note that in many parts of the
world Buddhism is as much involved in rituals and belief systems as any other
religion. Even so, his point was that ‘The Buddha made no claims about himself
other than that he woke up. [. . .] The possibility and nature of such awakening is
a major challenge to North American academic psychology’ (p. 34). This is a chal-
lenge that has since been enthusiastically taken up (Hanson, 2009; Michaelson,
2013; Taylor, 2017).
A pertinent question is: what happens if your earnest inquiry into yourself provides
answers other than those about impermanence, illusion, and suffering? What
if your waking-up is different from the Buddha’s? Many writers have described
how ordinary people, as well as devoted practitioners of meditation, have just
‘woken up’, and their accounts include again and again the familiar notions of
freedom from illusion and the ending of duality that lightens suffering (Kapleau,
1980; Crook and Fontana, 1990; Sheng-Yen et al., 2002; Harris, 2014). Does this
mean that waking up is always the same? Not necessarily. Those practising within
any tradition will inevitably be influenced by their teachers, and the effects of
meditation may be heavily dependent on their expectations. Even if people spon-
taneously wake up with no knowledge of spiritual or mystical experiences, they
may simply be falling for a common illusion – and we have met plenty of examples
of such common illusions. How can we be sure that claims to have dropped the
illusions are to be believed? This is a question that the scientific study of spiritual
experience must address, and indeed is beginning to address.
There are other reasons to be sceptical about the fit between Buddhism and sci-
ence. Some of the core Buddhist teachings, such as the Abhidharma, may appear
to be more like psychology than doctrine, including complex categorisations
and long lists of mental phenomena with their origins and interconnections. Yet,
unlike a scientific psychology, these schemes are fixed and unchanging, more
akin to doctrines to be learned and believed than hypotheses about the mind
to be tested by any kind of experimentation. In this sense, they become more
like religious dogma than the Buddha’s urging not to depend on scriptures and
doctrines but to work towards one’s own awakening.
There may seem to be another difference from conventional science in that the
Abhidharma’s categories of mind are derived not from third-person experiments
but from first-person phenomenological inquiry, but in the previous chapter we
