Chapter
Eighteen
Waking up
them against a longer practice history, the manner in
which the report is given, and observations of other
behaviour (Davis and Vago, 2013). It seems also that
meditative practice helps reduce the very biases
which this scepticism guards against (and this reduc-
tion can be measured using scientifically developed
tests), so the prospects seem good for greater dove-
tailing of scientific and meditative practice.
One of the experiences often thought of in terms of
a temporary glimpse of enlightenment is the experi-
ence of ‘cessation of all phenomena’, an ‘inseparable
emptiness–luminosity–bliss state, not different in
nature from awareness itself ’ (Davis and Vago, 2013,
p. 1). In these moments, there is ‘pure consciousness’:
awareness without anything to be aware of or any-
one to be aware. Something of this kind has now
been studied with two experienced practitioners,
comparing these deeper experiences of cessation
with the more common experience of a sensory
object ‘passing or vanishing from conscious aware-
ness’ (p. 2), and finding much more significant levels
of activation at moments of peak clarity in frontal
polar cortex – pointing the way to finding potential
neural markers relative to individual baseline states.
Technological limitations like fMRI’s temporal resolu-
tion, and statistical limitations like reliance on a com-
parison between a state of interest and another state
of no interest, will need tackling along with the other
questions of methodology we have considered. But
for momentary experiences of enlightenment, there
seems a clear way forward.
Second, there is what is usually thought of as lying
at the end of the path: sometimes called ultimate
enlightenment, or full awakening. This is not a state
of consciousness like a mystical or religious expe-
rience, or even a kensho experience, which passes
away. Indeed, it is often said not to be a state at all.
Everything is just the same as it always was, because
everything is inherently enlightened. A famous Zen
proverb says, ‘Before enlightenment chop wood, carry
water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water’.
This well describes John Wren-Lewis’s approach to life.
In this sense, there is no path to enlightenment
because there is nowhere to go and no one who
travels, even though there are many paths that each
of us treads. Those who speak of enlightenment
at all say that it cannot be explained or described.
Anything you say is beside the point. So in this sense‘does ordinary insight
differ from the brief
state of “enlightenment”
called kensho in Zen?’
(Austin, 2009, p. 125)
PURe ConsCIoUsness
Is there such a thing? Pure consciousness is
described as a state of wakeful awareness
without content of any kind: no thoughts, no
perceptions, no self, no other, and no sense of
body, space, or time.
this notion appears in Christianity in the
medieval work of mysticism The Cloud of
Unknowing, in Buddhist meditation tradi-
tions, and in Hinduism, where Nirvikalpa
Samadhi is a state of no duality, no mind,
and no experience. In transcendental medi-
tation, pure consciousness is said to be what
is left when all thoughts cease and the man-
tra finally drops away. Pure consciousness
has been described as a type of mystical
experience that cuts right across cultural and
linguistic divisions (Forman, 1990, 1999). An
attempt has even been made to model this
state in a machine that turns its attentional
system on itself (Aleksander, 2007, p. 94),
and Baars has suggested experimental ways
of testing it (in Blackmore, 2005, pp. 20–21).
If you were convinced that pure consciousness exists, this
would be a problem for some theories of consciousness
that cannot account for it. For example, representational-
ist theories rely on experience having content, so cannot
account for pure consciousness (Bachmann, 2014), and
phenomenologists following Husserl claim to have dis-
covered that all experience is intentional, or about some-
thing. others have claimed that contentless experience
cannot logically exist, that mystical experiences must be
shaped by culture and religious training, and that relying
on reports of experiences is always dubious (Katz, 1978;
Forman, 1990, 1999).
some neuroscientists are equally dismissive, claiming
that ‘it does not make any sense to speak of experience
without an experiencer who experiences the experiences’
(Cleeremans, 2008, p. 21), let alone to posit experience
without content. Hofstadter says that ‘unfortunately for
the Zen folks’ we cannot turn off our hallucinations and
perceptions. ‘We can try to do so, can tell ourselves we’veC
on
C
e
P
t
18.2