4. THE SPECTRUM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

From Gross to Subtle

Patricia Churchland’s presentation sparked a discussion in which the Dalai Lama distinguishes between different types of awareness. Buddhist psychology identifies a spectrum of consciousness from gross to subtle, with the gross being equivalent to those aspects of consciousness dependent on the brain that are recognized by Western science. At the far end of the range, subtle consciousness is least dependent on the physical brain.

The very idea of subtle consciousness is problematic for the scientists here, who assume all consciousness to be an emergent property of the physical organization of the brain. Aside from the philosophical problems surrounding causal relationships between nonphysical phenomena and the physical world, there are also problems of a different order, as two disciplines try to communicate without a shared terminology. Where Tibetan Buddhism uses the term subtle with the technical precision appropriate to an elaborate body of theoretical knowledge and a long tradition of empirical testing of that knowledge, its meaning to the scientists is vague and sometimes contradictory. The problem of subtle consciousness returns again in various forms throughout the conference and proves to be the most stubborn of sticking points in the dialogue.

DALAI LAMA: There are a great many varieties of awareness and degrees and qualities of consciousness. Some, which are of a grosser nature, are entirely dependent on the brain. In respect to them, unless the brain functions, these grosser mental experiences will not occur.

That is interesting, but I should like to know: What happens when you get down to a subtle level of functioning in the brain—a level of functioning that is very minute in scale and degree—do you understand? The grosser levels of mind, or awareness, are heavily dependent upon the physical brain. If we take that principle farther into fine detail and subject it to analysis in its finest, uttermost detail, the question is: Does that level of awareness arise in response to stimulation, or can subtle activation of the brain be generated by a subtle change in the mind, or by something else, perhaps extracorporeal?

I think of awareness as being of two types: conceptual awareness and sensory awareness. It is quite clear that sensory awareness is directly dependent upon the physical components and functioning of the body. Now, turning to conceptual processes, when we think about something, isn’t it evident that changes in the body can occur as a result of our thinking? When conceptual processes occur, are they produced by neural processes which give rise to the mental processes, which in turn give rise to further ramifications in the body, or is it otherwise?

Sometimes when we recall something, we get some kind of image; then, depending on that image, we engage in various thoughts. There will certainly be some physical basis, some physical stimulation, that gives rise to that original recollected image.

But isn’t it true that on some occasions—seemingly out of the blue, as it were—a thought arises, a mental image comes into awareness, which may have a number of important implications, repercussions, and effects? The question then is: What causes those conceptual events which occur without any cause that we can discern subjectively? Are they elicited by something occurring in the brain, or might they have some other source or origin of stimulus?

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: It must have a cause in the brain, or at least that’s our expectation. Of course nobody has proved that that is inevitably the case, because our investigations of the brain haven’t progressed that far. But it is hard to see how it could be otherwise. Not being aware of the cause does not entail that there is no cause. It is just hidden from awareness. People were unaware for a long time of the causes of planetary motion, but it definitely has causes.

ANTONIO DAMASIO: There is one example that might be important at this point. When something appears to be coming out of the blue, one possibility is that it may be triggered by something explicit, but that it appears to us to come out of the blue because our conscious attention is focused elsewhere. We normally are able to focus only on a small fraction of brain events at any given time, and most of what is happening in our brains and also around us is in fact not under the range of our attention. This applies not only to what we see and hear outside, but also to what goes on in our internal thought processes.

There is definitely only a very small range and content of information that we can ever attend to. So something that was not attended to, a stream or ongoing chain of thoughts that you might not be aware of, could suddenly pop up. If your attention had not moved in that direction, then that would appear to come all of a sudden, out of the blue. Yet, it was associated with a quite different chain of thinking that you were not then attending to, and which would still be dependent upon regular brain mechanisms.

DALAI LAMA: Must all mental events, even those that seem to come out of the blue, have physical causes? Is your assertion here based upon a great number of observations—that a great number of mental events certainly do arise as a result of cerebral events? Are you making this generalization because it may be uncomfortable to admit that there could be exceptions? Or, have you established with 100 percent certainty that exceptions do not occur and you know explicitly why?

ANTONIO DAMASIO: As Pat said, there is very little that we have established at 100 percent for anything.

DALAI LAMA: Isn’t it the case that you have simply not found any mental events independent of physical events, rather than finding that there are no mental events independent of physical events? That is a subtle but important distinction.

ALLAN HOBSON: Science will never be able to prove the latter assertion. Tomorrow we will talk about dreaming. Dreaming depends explicitly on brain states that used to be considered extremely subtle, with no possible physical explanation in brain activity. At present, I think it is very clear that all aspects of spontaneous thoughts that arise in dreams are related to specific activation of the brain and come from no other source.

DALAI LAMA: According to Buddhist theory, there are some things that belong to subtle consciousness, or subtle mind, that are independent from the body, from the brain. There is no assertion in Buddhism that there is a thing called a soul or a thing called consciousness, some thing that exists independently of the brain. There is no such thing existing independently of the brain or being dependent upon the brain. But rather, consciousness is understood as a multifaceted matrix of events. Some of them are utterly dependent on the brain, and, at the other end of the spectrum, some of them are completely independent of the brain. There is no one thing that is the mind or soul.

I am uncertain about Buddhist philosophy or psychology here in terms of the relation between the brain and the body. Although in the traditional Buddhist context there is no specific reference to brain in respect to conceptual thinking, there is reference to the physical activities, faculties, and organs involved in perception. Vision is understood to be a subtle form of matter which is in the eye, but I don’t know of a specific reference, apart from the eye, for connections back and forth with the brain.

There is a distinction between sensory awareness and mental awareness, and in terms of mental awareness, there is conceptual as well as nonconceptual mental awareness. And certainly it is a fundamental theory of Buddhism that there is disparity between appearances and reality.

So what criticism do you have of the position I have outlined here?

ALLAN HOBSON: I would like to respond directly to the stated theory. I would say the claim that the part of mentation which is independent of the brain is “subtle” is a function of our ignorance of the subtlety of the brain.

DALAI LAMA: When we speak of mental awareness, it does not always refer only to the subtle awareness. From the time of conception to the time of death, the body is obviously functioning in some way, but when the body ceases to function as a body, there is still a very subtle form of consciousness and that is independent of the body. The fact that the body is able to act as a basis for mental events is dependent on the preexistence of a subtle form of consciousness.

What you call consciousness has its basis in a subtle type of awareness. There is a capacity for awareness, a kind of luminosity which is of the nature of awareness itself, which must arise from a preceding moment of awareness. In other words, there is a continuum of awareness that does not itself arise from the brain. This basic capacity exists right from the initial formation of the conceptus, prior to the formation of the brain itself.

ALLAN HOBSON: Western science would obviously not agree with that part of Buddhist theory. We would assume that conscious awareness arises at some stage during brain development, when there are enough neurons with elaborate enough connections to support conscious activity. We would hold that there is no prior consciousness. Consciousness, therefore, is not infinite in our view. It originates in brains, and it is essentially expandable according to the number of brains that have been sufficiently evolved biologically.

WHEN DOES CONSCIOUSNESS BEGIN?

The discussion then turned to an issue that has received much attention in the West. A determination of when consciousness begins is pivotal in the right-to-life debate that has polarized American society, and there is an active committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that is pondering this problem at present. We know that the basic architecture of the brain is formed during embryogenesis, and that the brain is already remarkably well organized in its basic plan by the beginning of fetal life, after only eight weeks of gestation.

But for all the attention the question has received, there is a startling lack of consensus among the participants at this meeting on even the most basic criteria for determining whether an organism is conscious. The confusion is revealing. The scientific exploration of consciousness in the West is so young that we lack even a definition of consciousness that would allow us to recognize it unequivocally.

DALAI LAMA: At what point in the formation of the fetus do you posit consciousness arising for the first time?

ALLAN HOBSON: It is impossible to say at this point.

ROBERT LIVINGSTON: Biologically it originates gradually, so it is hard to say precisely at what point it is sufficient to meet some particular definition of consciousness, to measure its beginning. The beginnings of biological organization, and probably the beginnings of consciousness, arise asymptotically and in accordance with a biological schedule of neuronal and glial cell divisions, migrations, and elaborations into an embryonic brain, with continuing development throughout gestation and postnatally. The brain at birth weighs about 350 grams. It doubles in volume by six months. It doubles again by about the fourth birthday. Thereafter, it increases by only about ten percent, reaching its maximum around, roughly, the twentieth year. Consciousness certainly begins before birth, but how early is by no means established.

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: How can you be so sure that consciousness begins before birth?

ROBERT LIVINGSTON: For example, you can condition a baby beginning with the early part of the last trimester and can do so more and more subtly throughout that period.

ALLAN HOBSON: Conditionability doesn’t imply consciousness.

ROBERT LIVINGSTON: I would have assumed that there was awareness, consciousness, of a kind of enclosure, sometimes red and sometimes completely black, that moves about, and manifests noises like the mother’s heart sounds or the sounds of blood coursing through the placenta. In this dynamic enclosure one can move about against both elastic and contractile forces, change posture, relax, suck one’s thumb, and even be aware of outside sounds, such as voices and melodies. I would apply the same criteria that I would apply to an animal to decide whether it was conscious or not. A newborn babe looks around, reaches for the source of a novel sound, responds differentially to its mother’s voice, and, when hungry, certainly seeks the breast using olfactory, gustatory, and tactile cues, and lets go of the breast when satiated and goes off to sleep. Do you think the child is not conscious until it has linguistic categories in its head?

ANTONIO DAMASIO: It is a tough question. You can have conditioning, but that’s it.

DALAI LAMA: I assume that even a fetus well along in its development in the womb must have some sort of tactile sensation. I suppose it is unlikely that it has auditory or visual sensations.

ROBERT LIVINGSTON: It has auditory ability and, specifically, auditory memory. Even a child that is premature by some weeks can recognize its own mother’s voice differentially. It exhibits a change in heart rate and level of alertness when its mother’s voice is presented by tape recorder. This means it has stored rather elaborate acoustic memories before birth. And, it does not manifest such responses when the voice of another newborn’s mother reads the same text on the tape recorder.

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: Also, a fetus will jump—I mean when you are carrying it, it will jump to a loud noise. I can tell you. But this does not imply anything about awareness.

DALAI LAMA: It must have some experience and feeling.

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: Not necessarily. It could be just responding reflexively.

ROBERT LIVINGSTON: But recognition of the mother’s voice means the child has learned that voice, recognizes that voice, and pays attention to that particular voice.

ANTONIO DAMASIO: But it doesn’t mean it is conscious.

ROBERT LIVINGSTON: You’re right. But then, that leaves moot many questions about consciousness in humans and animals. We depend medically mostly on behavioral manifestations. Are we not conscious of those events in life for which we may be open-eyed and fully responsive, even behaving admirably, as in habitual behaviors such as driving a car, but about which events we do not thereafter remember?

LARRY SQUIRE: I think that the neuroscientists would say that just as there is tremendous complexity and subtlety to consciousness, so the brain has every bit as much complexity and subtlety and detail. As one looks into the brain in increasing detail, one sees extraordinary specialization, especially in the primates and in humans. For example, the brain has developed from fifty to one hundred different little areas in the occipital and temporal lobes, all specialized for different aspects of vision. Within each of those areas are millions of neurons and connections. Although one cannot prove the hypothesis in any final way, there is optimism that the brain has the capacity, and the complexity, for all of the subtlety that consciousness displays.

I think neuroscientists would be sympathetic to the viewpoint that consciousness itself can have cause. At the level of organization of whole systems, consciousness itself can roll forward, causing the events that come forth in sequence. But the planning and execution of behavior is all attached to the physical substrate which is moving along with it. There could be little causal events at tiny places in our brain, or larger causal events or states of the brain, or constituents of the brain, that are organized essentially at the level of our thinking—events that are attached to the brain and organized at a level that moves forward as cause.

ON SPECIALIZATION AND ADAPTATION

DALAI LAMA: So, for example, in very deep meditation, when the mind is brought to a fine point of concentration, would you assume that this is associated with certain parts of the brain? Some people are able to concentrate very, very powerfully, and others have a limited capacity for that. Do you understand this to be a result of differences or deficiencies in the cells?

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: Yes, there are differences in some aspects of the brain just as we expect there to be neuronal differences between people who manifest different musical capacities. Some sing very well, others sing off pitch, others have perfect pitch. It is the same with concentration and other mental talents. And evidently these capacities are similarly subject to improvement and discipline with training. It would be wonderful to discover precisely the nature of the biological differences. It would be very interesting to know what goes on in the brain during meditation, for example, and how that compares with playing tennis or listening to music.

ANTONIO DAMASIO: There could actually be two types of differences. One is one’s genetic endowment and original brain development reflected in inborn aptitude or potential skill, such as aptitude for acquiring musical talent or the ability to express oneself well in language. Secondly, there may be differences in how one has learned and how one has developed through education.

Differences in ability, such as the ability to meditate and concentrate very deeply, would become exaggerated by practice based on the original differences. But all that would certainly be ascribable to brain events. There are differences that could occur in different brain regions in a concerted fashion, perhaps augmented or entrained by practice, that could relate to those particular abilities to concentrate the mind on a given point.

At this point Robert Livingston provided an illustration of how the mechanisms of perception adapt, even unconsciously, to compensate for an inborn disability. In children with alternating strabismus, he explained, a muscle weakness prevents the eyes from converging correctly.

ROBERT LIVINGSTON: In these cases, the child automatically learns to depend on one eye at a time, using one eye and then the other alternately. Otherwise he would see two images and not be able to tell which one to rely upon. Such a child can do very skillful things like playing Ping-Pong or basketball, using one eye or the other, without being himself aware of which eye he is using. At the same time, conscious perception must be dealing strictly with information from one eye or the other at any given time. This is indispensable for that child’s correct application of consciousness to spatial judgments and behavior. His consciousness must be swiftly and quite reliably switching alternately between the two eyes and also switching control of perception in order to guide body musculature, eye movements, etc. The brain is responsible for this abrupt, instantaneous switching between two elaborate neuronal patterns of distribution, serving perceptual awareness but without self-consciousness being exerted on the control of the switching itself. The switching becomes entirely automatic and unconscious in cases of alternating strabismus.

THE CONTINUITY OF SUBTLE CONSCIOUSNESS

Allan Hobson now addressed a direct question to the Dalai Lama, the first to be so boldly stated, and a hush of anticipation fell over the room. Years later, Larry Squire reflected on the lasting impression that the Dalai Lama’s response made on him and the others present. His Holiness presents the logical reasoning for the Buddhist position, but also acknowledges the anecdotal nature of his evidence, and echoes the caveat earlier framed by Churchland and Damasio, that science can very rarely claim 100 percent certainty for anything. In so doing, he voices a readiness to expose centuries of sacred tradition to the light of unsparingly rigorous enquiry. It was not so much a concession of a point in the debate as a demonstration of willingness to engage with them on their own terms. Would they meet this challenge with equally open minds?

ALLAN HOBSON: What is the evidence, from your perspective, that subtle aspects of consciousness are independent of brain? That’s one question. A second question is: Are you really sure about this?

DALAI LAMA: When this world initially formed, there seem to have been two types of events or entities, one sentient, the other insentient. Rocks and plants, for instance, are examples of nonsentient entities. You see, we usually consider them to have no feelings: no pains and no pleasures. The other type, sentient beings, have awareness, consciousness, pains and pleasures.

But there needs to be a cause for that. If you posit there is no cause for consciousness, then this leads to all sorts of inconsistencies and logical problems. So, the cause is posited, established. It is considered certain.

The initial cause must be an independent consciousness. And on that basis is asserted the theory of continuation of life after death. It is during the interval when one’s continuum of awareness departs from one’s body at death that the subtle mind, the subtle consciousness, becomes manifest. That continuum connects one life with the next.

At this moment, we are using the sense organs at the grosser level; then when we are dreaming, a deeper level of consciousness manifests itself. Then beyond this there is deep sleep without dreaming, with a still deeper level of consciousness.

On some occasions, people faint. Even when your breath temporarily stops, during that moment, there is a reduced level of consciousness. Consciousness is most reduced late in the course of dying. Even after all physical functions cease, we believe that the “I,” or “self,” still exists. Similarly, just at the beginning of life, there must be a subtle form of consciousness to account for the emergence of consciousness in the individual.

We must explore further the point at which consciousness enters into a physical location. At conception, the moment when and the site where consciousness interacts with the fertilized egg is something to be discovered, although there are some references to this in the texts. The Buddhist scriptures do deal with it, but I am interested to see what science has to say about this. During this period we believe that without the subtle consciousness, there would be a life beginning without consciousness. If that were the case, then no one could ever recollect experiences from their past life. It is also in terms of Buddhist beliefs relating to this topic that Buddhism expounds its theory of cosmology: how the universe began and how it later degenerates.

Based on this metaphysical reasoning and other arguments, and based on the testimony of individuals who are able to recollect their experiences in past lives very vividly, Buddhists make this claim. I am a practitioner, so based on my own limited experiences, and the experiences of my friends, I cannot say with 100 percent certainty that there is a subtle consciousness.

You scientists don’t posit consciousness in the same sense that Buddhists do. At the moment of conception, however, there has to be something that prevents the sperm and egg from simply rotting, and causes it to grow into a human body. When does that occur? Why does that occur?

ANTONIO DAMASIO: Biological properties….

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: Of the cell and DNA. It is an important problem, but it has an explanation that we now understand. It requires no special forces, no supernatural processes, no ghostly interventions.

DALAI LAMA: We would like to discuss that in the next session. I want to know more, you see. Generally I find in the fields of cosmology, nuclear physics, subatomic physics, then, of course, psychology, neurobiology, these fields, there is a cross-connection to Buddhists’ explanations. I want to know your viewpoints. Because through you, major scientific viewpoints may suggest some experiments, maybe something very important. At the same time, there are some Buddhist explanations that may provide a different perspective for the West. So this experience is something very useful to me. Very, very useful.

Ever since we met, I have wanted to make clear an idea that is basic to Buddhism, especially of the Mahayana Buddhist approach. Namely, if strong evidence arises indicating that a given thing exists, then it will be accepted. On the contrary, if there is strong evidence that suggests the absence of such a thing—even certain things that are specifically asserted in the Buddhist canon, the original words of Buddha himself—even then, these words are to be interpreted on the basis of valid evidence, and not to be accepted at their face value. In other words, we do not adhere to the literal meaning of Buddha’s words when they are refuted by valid evidence.

Because of this basic Buddhist approach, which is very open, I really want to know your viewpoints. So, if you find from your own scientific perspective any arguments against a particular issue asserted in Buddhism, I would like you to be very frank, because I will learn and benefit from that.

COSMOLOGY AND THE ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The discussion here returns to the origins of consciousness. His Holiness explains the causal logic behind the Buddhist understanding of the origins of consciousness and the role of karma in the formation of the universe. In relation to the Buddhist distinctions between sentient and nonsentient, material and nonmaterial phenomena, Robert Livingston presents a scientific explanation of the biochemical distinctions between organic life and inorganic matter.

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: One part of the picture that I didn’t quite understand, or I guess that I disagree with, is the idea that there were originally two very different things that were created. There were material things and there were nonmaterial things.

DALAI LAMA: My understanding is that by and large Western cosmologists still adhere to some form of the Big Bang theory. The question from the Buddhist view is: What preceded the Big Bang?

ROBERT LIVINGSTON: There are a lot of scientists who think that the time has passed for support of the theory of the Big Bang and that there was not necessarily a Big Bang.

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: Even if that’s true, then all we can say is that we don’t know what came before the Big Bang, and it could have been a yet bigger Bang. But I think Western cosmologists would say that we don’t have any evidence whatever that there was any nonmaterial stuff. We can see the development of life on our planet starting with amino acids, RNA, and very simple single-celled organisms that didn’t have anything like awareness, and the development of multicelled organisms, and finally organisms with nervous systems. By then you find organisms that can see and move and interact. So the conclusion seems to be that the ability to perceive and have awareness and to think, arises out of nervous systems rather than out of some force that preceded the development of nervous systems.

DALAI LAMA: The Buddhist view is that in the external world there are some elements that are material, and some that are nonmaterial. And the fundamental substance, the stuff from which the material universe arises is known as space particles. A portion of space is quantized, to use a modern term; it is particulate, not continuous. Before the formation of the physical universe as we know it, there was only space, but it was quantized. And it was from the quanta, or particles, in space that the other elements arose. This accounts for the physical universe.

But what brought about that process? How did it happen? It is believed that there existed other conditions, or other influences, which were nonmaterial, and these were of the nature of awareness. The actions of sentient beings in the preceding universe somehow modify, or influence, the formation of the natural universe.

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: But then I want to know why you think that. What is the evidence for that?

DALAI LAMA: There are some similarities between Western science and Buddhist philosophy in that neither is dealing with absolutes or 100 percent conviction. In this way we are both faced with options, out on a philosophical limb.

The tradition that evolved in India dealt with many fundamental philosophical issues. We have to account for the existence of matter in the universe. Do we want to say it arises from a cause or no cause?

The first fundamental philosophical question is: How do we determine whether something exists or not? That is the initial question. The factor that determines the existence or nonexistence of something is verifying cognition, or awareness: the awareness that verifies. You have some experience; you saw something, so it exists. That’s the final criteria.

Within the range of phenomena that fulfill the criteria of existence, there are two categories: things that undergo dynamic changes and things that are permanent or unchanging. The latter are not necessarily permanent in terms of being eternal, but permanent in terms of not changing. (In Buddhism, not everything that changes is physical.) For the phenomena that undergo change, there should be a reason or cause which makes the change possible. We can see that both the universe and human beings have this nature of changing. Therefore, they depend upon causes and conditions.

When we search for the causes, there are two types: substantial causes and cooperative causes. When you speak of one thing being the substantial cause of another, this means it actually transforms into that entity. For example, what exists inside a seed actually transforms into the sprout that arises from it. The seed would be the substantial cause of the sprout, whereas the fertilizer, moisture, and everything else would be cooperative causes. A farmer, for example, would be a cooperative cause for the arising of the wheat crop, but he didn’t enter into the wheat crop as did the seed.

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: This is a little like Aristotle, who spoke of proximal cause and efficient cause.

DALAI LAMA: So we can look at these phenomena that are subject to change, and we can go back to their beginning and ask: Did this arise in dependence on a cause or in dependence on no cause? If we accept phenomena which demonstrate the nature of arising from cause, and then posit an initial stage where there is no cause, that would be inconsistent and very difficult to accept. How can you say, suddenly, that everything happened without previous cause? There’s a logical inconsistency in maintaining that something now shows the nature of being dependent upon cause, while at the same time claiming that initially it had no cause.

In the ancient philosophical treatises in India, there emerged two different philosophical systems, or schools of thought, on this question. One accepted that the original cause had to be something external, such as a God. From the Buddhist perspective, it is logically very uncomfortable to posit God as being the one cause of everything. The problem, then, becomes: What created God? It is the same question.

PATRICIA CHURCHLAND: Good. That was the question I was going to ask you concerning the first awareness.

DALAI LAMA: So when we ask, what is the substantial cause of the material universe way back in the early history of the universe, we trace it back to the space particles which transform into the elements of this manifest universe. And then we can ask whether those space particles have an ultimate beginning. The answer is no. They are beginningless. Where other philosophical systems maintain that the original cause was God, Buddha suggested the alternative that there aren’t any ultimate causes. The world is beginningless. Then the question would be: Why is it beginningless? And the answer is, it is just nature. There is no reason. Matter is just matter.

Now we have a problem: What accounts for the evolution of the universe as we know it? What accounts for the loose particles in space forming into the universe that is apparent to us? Why did it go through orderly processes of change? Buddhists would say there is a condition which makes it possible, and we speak of that condition as the awareness of sentient beings.

For example, within the last five billion years, the age of our planet, microorganisms have come into existence roughly two billion years ago, and sentient beings, perhaps during the last billion years. (We call “sentient” all beings that experience the feelings of pain and pleasure.) Especially during the last one billion years then, we see an evolution into more complex organisms. Now we humans are experiencing this world. And there is a relationship between our environment and ourselves, in the sense that we experience pleasure and pain in relation to this environment.

From a Buddhist point of view, we ask: Why do we experience this universe in this relational way? The cause of our experiencing pain and pleasure in this present moment in this particular universe means that we must have contributed something, somewhere, sometime in the past to the evolution of this present situation. It is in this respect that the question of karma enters. In Buddhism, it is held that there were sentient beings in a previous universe who shared continua of consciousness with us in this universe and thereby provided a conscious connection from the previous universe to our own.

ALLAN HOBSON: What is the evidence?

DALAI LAMA: Yes, very difficult, very difficult.

THUPTEN JINPA: I would give an answer to that. When someone builds a house to live in, you have to have a plan. And on the basis of that plan you build the house, and then later you can live in it. In the same manner, sentient beings who produced the evolution of this present universe made this plan, but not necessarily consciously, by leaving karmic imprints within their subtle mental consciousness, which later, when activated, made it possible to influence the formation of this universe.

ALAN WALLACE: We do not need to prove everything. We don’t need to argue as to whether this physical universe can be experienced. This is obvious.

DALAI LAMA: That’s right. Once again, the criterion for determining whether something is existent is whether it is ascertained by a verifying cognition, which means a cognition that is not mistaken. For example, a flower cannot prove the existence of a tree. Because the flower does not have verifying cognition, it cannot demonstrate the existence of anything else. Experiential awareness is an instrument through which we judge whether something is existent or not. So then the question would be: If we really possess awareness, or cognition, then that must also have causes. Specifically, the awareness must have a substantial cause. Now if the substantial cause of awareness is matter, then why is it that some things have no consciousness, and other things, such as animals, have consciousness?

ROBERT LIVINGSTON: I have a suggestion here, Your Holiness. The thing that is particular about organisms is that they are composed of organic carbon compounds. Carbon has four symmetric valences that facilitate the assembly of long-chain compounds. Simple carbon chain compounds can build spontaneously into enzymes and replicating devices such as ribonucleic acid (RNA). And simple proteins are formed from primordial amino acids. These contribute to the production of more carbon compounds and replicating machinery. Thus deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) evolves.

Out of a variety of such long-chain compounds come things like membranes. Sheets of conjoined, adherent molecules form membranes, asymmetric on the two sides. By surface tension, these form readily into spherules, presenting barriers which favor differential transport of substances into and out of the spherules. The replicating machinery of DNA, RNA, and enzymes is relatively protected within the spherules. This suggests the beginnings of cells. The machinery that can replicate the whole aggregate, by replicating the machinery itself and the spherule, is favored over less competent systems for survival and continuing replication. The operation of this selection process means that evolution is off and running!

Mechanisms for the replication of molecules increased opportunities for the appearance and reappearance—and persistence, by iterative replication—of specially efficient or adaptive, or otherwise advantageous, compounds, cells, and organisms.

The machinery of cells, which is assembled in a variety of short and long-chain carbon compounds, composed of elements compounded from inorganic matter, is centrally important here as it consists of self-organizing, emergent phenomena. By this time at least, the controlled cascade of electron energy, the earliest beginnings of metabolic machinery, has emerged. Photosynthesis, the process of capturing high-energy electrons to make sugars and amino acids out of carbon dioxide and water and nitrogen, is a self-renewing source of high-to-low energy electrons. Self-replicating systems, organized functionally by trial and error developed subtle metabolic pathways. Ways were “found,” or selected, to take electron energies—in ordered sequences and branching pathways—from high to low energy levels in small steps. The essential process was the controlled reduction of electron energy in a staircase of small steps, as in a flowing cascade of water, rather than in an abrupt fall as in a waterfall. The controlled energy decrements are utilized to assemble molecules, to transport substances within cells, to transport products across cell membranes, as in secretion and neurotransmission, to provide motile power to cells, to contract muscles, to control the dance of chromosomes and other aspects of cell division, to control the fusion of cells, as in fertilization, and to operate all the innumerable physiological systems in multicellular organisms.

This controlled electron energy decrement is something not seen in the inorganic world. Something radically new has been added to the universe in this process. In the inorganic world, shifts in electron energy level are brusque, abrupt, jolting, with large, precipitate falls rather than slight decrements in electron energy levels. In living systems, delicate metabolic machinery is disrupted by such precipitate falls in electron energy levels. The kinds of abrupt shift in electron energy that occur in the inorganic world are actually destructive of life. The effects of ionizing radiation, as in radioactive damage to living systems, are of this abrupt kind, characteristic of inorganic electron dynamics. This is precisely why ionizing radiation is so disruptive and damaging to living systems.

The metabolic control of electron energy transfer permits extremely subtle metabolic, anabolic, and catabolic processes such as are involved in the construction of the great heterogeneity of carbon compounds that are encountered in living systems. These processes are manifested in all sentient beings, and, ultimately, in the development and evolution of nervous systems.

ANTONIO DAMASIO: It is possible in fact that certain things came about by processes of self-organization, as Bob suggests. Out of a prior low level of order, certain chance events contribute to an increase in order, which, by selection, is preserved and elaborated, providing new opportunities for the addition of increasing complexity and higher-level order. In this way, by Darwinian selection, higher forms of life emerge. All forms of life are self-organizing, including ourselves.

Presently, we have examples in mathematics and in certain systems that have been simulated in computers that indicate convincingly that there is absolutely no guide, no supervisor, no controller necessary for certain things to happen in an orderly and reasonably predictable way. As Ilya Prigogine has shown, information can be gained without violating the second law of thermodynamics.

And the same thing applies to the way embryogenesis organizes complicated physical structures such as our brain. So, the thing we are questioning is whether you need to go back always to some originating planner or supervisor.

In fact, when Thupten Jinpa had introduced the metaphor of the universe built like a house according to a plan, under the influence of the actions of sentient beings, he emphasized that this was “not necessarily consciously” done. Dr. Damasio’s attribution of this influence to “some originating planner or supervisor” tends toward a Judeo-Christian conception of a creator God and misrepresents what Jinpa had been trying to articulate. To address this, the Dalai Lama adds the following clarification.

DALAI LAMA: Perhaps an understanding of what Buddhist philosophers call the four principles of reason might be helpful in understanding how karma conditions the processes of evolution in the universe, and the role of sentient beings who inhabit the universe. Those four principles are: (1) the principle of dependence, (2) the principle of efficacy, (3) the principle of valid proof, and (4) the principle of reality.¹

Generally speaking, that philosophy states that the universe arises and evolves in dependence upon karma. But how far, and how deep, does that dependence go? To what extent does the karmic influence act on the origin and evolution of the universe and on the way the universe functions? What are the limits? What are the levels of effect of karma?

And also, in what categories of the four laws would the influence of karma come into effect? To what extent is it through the law of nature, the law of dependence, the law of function, or the law of evidence? I myself am eager to investigate the limits of karma. I doubt that all natural phenomena, such as the orbits of the planets, and how a particular tree may grow, depend upon karma, or are influenced or determined by karma. I suspect that these may be determined or brought about by influences apart from karma.