Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 50-minute Mind Science Forum dialogue recorded at the Australian National University in 2002, His Holiness the Dalai Lama engages with neuroscientists and philosophers to explore the nature of consciousness and the unconscious mind. The session opens with Professor Alan Snyder’s observations on how the nonconscious mind drives decision-making and creativity, drawing on examples from mathematics and poetry, and noting surprising parallels between meditation and contemporary brain science. The Dalai Lama clarifies Buddhism’s empirical, investigative approach to understanding reality and identifies four fields where Buddhist and scientific perspectives converge: cosmology, neurobiology, quantum physics, and psychology. Subsequent panelists—neurobiologist Jack Pettigrew, brain scientist Max Bennett, and physicist Paul Davies—discuss hemispheric lateralization, transcranial magnetic stimulation, brain plasticity, and the mysterious human capacity for mathematical understanding. The Dalai Lama responds with Buddhist accounts of multiple levels of consciousness, dream states, deep sleep, and the subtle mind that may persist even when gross brain function ceases. The dialogue balances scientific methodology with contemplative insight, pitched at an educated general audience.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2024-05-02 – 1A – ANU – HHDL.mp3
UUID: 5f27f5a2-1601-40d7-908a-d29f862649b6
Teacher: HH Dalai Lama
Collection: Mind Science Forum
Date: 2024-05-02
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~4,823
Good afternoon. I’m Robin Williams. It’s my privilege to welcome you to this seminar on the unconscious mind, a unique occasion during which we shall have a dialogue between a Buddhist view of consciousness and unconsciousness and a scientific one under the auspices of the Australian National University in the center of the mind. It’s gonna be an exploration with many of our guests and, of course, his holiness, the Dalai Lama, looking at the way the mind works at the sub atomic level, at the molecular level, at the physiological level, then, of course, at the physiological and philosophical level, and the Dalai Lama will examine all levels. I will now introduce the panel starting with professor Max Bennett from the University of Sydney.
Would you please welcome him? So you’re far left. Max Bennett is a brain scientist, as indeed is Jack Pettigrew from the University of Queensland, a physiologist. Would you please welcome Jack Pettigrew? Frank Jackson from Canberra from the ANU is a philosopher.
Would you please welcome him, please? And my subatomic friend and neighbor, Paul Davies. And, of course, his holiness, the Dalai Lama. Ladies and gentlemen. Dalai Lama, may I assure you, I speak for many Australians when we say how much we support your struggle and your country’s struggle for freedom.
There is an effect of conflict this afternoon between the Buddhist approach and a problem we have with a Western approach, and that is time. So I’m going to be extraordinarily brief, and I hope you’ll forgive me for that and get on with things quite quickly because we have to shut down at about 04:30 and planes have to be caught and so forth. However, I would like now to introduce one of the people behind this wonderful session. He’s the director for the Center for the Mind, which is based both at the ANU and at the University of Sydney. Would you please welcome professor Alan Snyder?
Truly great science, truly great advances of any kind are about making leaps. About making leaps. Making intuitive leaps, making creative leaps, leaps that explode upon you seemingly from nowhere. Leaps often way beyond what you have any right to expect from conventional science. They defy conventional science.
But somehow, somehow, you just know they are justified. Somehow, they feel right. Somehow, they lock into place ideas that previously had been unconnected. I’m talking about the nonconscious mind. I’m talking about how problems seem to incubate in the nonconscious.
I’m talking about how answers pop into the conscious brain when you least expect them and seemingly from nowhere. Take the brilliant mathematician Poincare. His brilliant solution leaped into his mind unexpectedly as he stepped onto a bus and most importantly after a lengthy lengthy holiday. Take the German poet, Rilke, in the midst of a poem. Poem, Rilke ran out of inspiration and lapsed into an unproductive depression.
Ten years later, ten years later, his masterpiece sonnets to Orpheus leaped from his mind as if he were taking dictation. Dalai Lama, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, what is so remarkable about our brain is the fact that the nonconscious is the real executive in charge. Possibly nothing we do, no action we take, no thought we have is purely conscious. It is our nonconscious mind that plays the decision making role in so many matters that are crucial to our existence. It is our nonconscious mind that seems to have virtual dictatorial power about what is best for our survival.
When you think about it when you think about it, this is rather an extraordinary state of affairs, but this is how we are wired up. We are not aware of the mechanisms giving rise to our senses. We are not aware of our thoughts or how we form them and worse still worse still, we do not even consciously see what is out there. What we do see is based largely on what we expect to see. What we do see is based largely on what we already know.
What we do see is a construct of the nonconscious mind. Two people looking at the very same cloud can see radically different images. The portrait painter sees a face of dignity. The ultrasound sonographer sees a diseased gallbladder. To me, this says it all.
It says it all. We are intrinsically blinded. We see only what we know. Is it possible to extricate ourselves from this intrinsic blindness? Is it possible to see the world the way it really is?
Amazingly, certain brain damaged people like autistic savants can do just that. Savants are peculiarly literal. They lack the big picture. They lack decision making. But savants display extraordinary skills.
Skills which demonstrate that they can access the nonconscious mind. Can we, through some artificial means, also gain this privileged access? Say, by switching off the part of the brain that is damaged in savants? Yes. Yes.
We can. We do this by inhibiting the brain with magnetic pulses. Ordinary people can actually become more literal by turning off part of their brain. They can actually access their nonconscious mind. But are magnetic pulses the only way to do this?
What about altered states of consciousness? What about altered states of consciousness? After the BBC documentary on our magnetic pulse research, we receive mail from across the globe about how meditation also permits you to access the nonconscious mind. Can this be true? Does meditation, something known for thousands of years accomplish what we scientists are only today on the threshold of achieving?
Maybe maybe apparently the Buddhist notion of enlightenment is reached by peeling away those layers of conceptuality that obscure so called valid cognition. Ladies and gentlemen, there would appear to be a genuine synergy here. On one side, we have our scientific theories of the nonconscious along with our attempts to access it by technological means. On the other side, we have the Buddhist tradition of thought along with its meditative practice providing access to the nonconscious. So the challenge today, the challenge right here, right now, is to explore the potential synergies between two great systems of thought and to do so with daring.
The daring required whenever conventional boundaries are crossed. And to do so with courage. The courage required whenever conventional wisdom is confronted. Thank you. Alan Snyder, who keeps his magnet in his cap, which is why he wears it all the time.
Some thoughts about the unconscious mind, the idea that we can sleep on it and the brain ticks over and gets results. Dalai Lama, would you like to comment on Alan Snyder’s suggestions? At the beginning, I just want to say I’m extremely happy have this opportunity meeting with scientists and discuss some, I think, in a way, some mysterious things. Essentially, actually, every day and night, we we we feel very familiar. That is our mind and its experiences.
But at the same time, the mind itself and how it function and what kind of relation between brain or mind and whether there is such thing as a mind beside brain or not. Are these things still mysterious? So but anyways, without knowing the very precise thing, but still, you see, we have the capacity or potential to to make new shape of mind. Through that way, you see, we we can lead more successful, more happier life. So so you see the discussion or seminar on that subject is, I think, very, very important, very relevant.
So therefore, I’m very, very happy, extremely happy is to have this opportunity. But, of course, such I mean, discussion for such subject, two hours is too short. But in any way, I hope this is something like the beginning. So thank you very much. Now, I expressed through my own tongue.
It’s better. That oh, then I I will try. You know, the perhaps, it’s just some audience may have the sort of view of Buddhism religion, religion, and science. So between there, what kind of common ground? Some people may have that kind of feeling.
I think in order to clear about that kind of few, I I would like to say a few words. Buddhism in general and particularly the Mahāyāna Buddhism or Nālānda tradition, the century old, I mean, more than 2,000 years, you see they’re using human intelligence and experiment and reasoning, analyze. That’s one key thing for Buddhist tradition, especially Nālānda tradition. So because of that, the even I think, basically, we have somewhere there’s a liberty to unacceptable, to to not accept, even it’s in Buddha’s own word. If it is the meaning or if it is the point through our own daily experience or sort of experiment or analyze, the things become something different, then we have the liberty to what’s the even though something cannot accept what literature says, what sort of scripture says.
So that is I think our basic sort of stand. So carry investigation, analyze. So that the in the knowledge of tradition, it is very, very essential. So the I feel, basically, it’s a Buddhist approach. Also, you should try to see the reality, reality of mind, reality of phenomena, and everything.
The scientist, I think, up to now, mainly involved in the, I think, physical world. But basically, the same way to find out what’s the reality. So the different way of investigation, one relying more on maths. Mathematics. Mathematics.
Mathematics and some instrument or some something like that. Buddhist mainly just sort of some sort of I think that through meditations or through that kind of equipment through that way investigation. So different way of approach, different method, but both is a try to see the reality. So therefore, since many years, since now, I think more than I think I think twenty more than twenty years, I thought it is very, very interesting and very important to have closer sort of contact with scientists. And it’s up to now, according my own sort of experience, four fields, there’s cosmology and then neurobiology and then subatomic sort of physics, including quantum, and then modern psychology.
In these four fields, that we have sort of common sort of common grounds. And according my own little experience, as a result of meeting with scientists, Buddhist is extremely useful, you see, to know in four fields, you see, the latest scientific sort of Finding. Findings. And to the scientist, the Buddhist explanation, Buddhist way of thinking, sometimes useful to them to carry their own research from different angle or different of way Perspective. Different perspective.
So therefore, they now, I think several several occasion meeting with scientists. So now, the as a result of my own sort of participant or experiences, so encouraging. Now, since now, two, three years, I already we already started some study of science in our monastic institution in India. So now, we are sort of serious programming the study of science suddenly in a certain fields. So therefore, I think you you get the sort of idea why Buddhists and including Dalai Lama, you see, interested or from time to time, meeting with scientist.
I’m not trying to convert them to into Buddhism. No. Or the scientists, you see, try to convert me as a radical materialist. Actually, when we are meeting, it’s nothing to do with the religious faith. No.
Just sort of theory or as an experience of experiment. That’s all. So today’s meeting also purely academic or purely sort of as a day using human sort of reason or intelligence not as a faith. So now the question. Although it is difficult for me to fully and to comprehend what is meant by the English word, the unconscious mind, the subconscious, the unconscious mind that the professor was referring to.
However, to respond to this question of the unconscious mind, if we look at the Buddhist explanation of the nature of mind, there there seem to be various levels of understanding of, one could say, unconsciousness. For example, Buddhist theory of mind speaks of different levels of subtlety of mind. And, also, there is an understanding of subconscious states of mind, the states of mental phenomena mental states which are considered to be not fully aware to the individual. So, yes, there are certain discussions of these. Thank you very much.
It’s Thupten Jinpa, Doctor Jinpa from the, well, in fact, you were at Cambridge, weren’t you? I I see my notes amongst other places. Could I introduce Jack Pettigrew now to perhaps make a comment and put a question? You mentioned the the field of neurobiology, and I I wanted to address a question to you in that area. In the recent times, we become aware of the fact that the two hemispheres, the two halves of the brain are different.
They have different cognitive styles, and even in animals you can see this asymmetry. Now there are various ways that this could be arranged, and I was struck by the fact that when I looked at a Tibetan Buddhist diagram, you call it Tsa-lung and Thigle. It’s a diagram of the two sides of the body. What’s remarkable is that the right side of the body is drawn red and the attributes that are found on the diagram to the right side of the body are all attributes that we know now belong to the left hemisphere in most people. Now if you allow for the fact that these great mystics two thousand years ago did not know about the crossover from the hemispheres to the body if you allow for that It it it’s remarkable that There’s a correspondence.
So the neurobiology says that the left side of the brain is for red, not for not for greenish white. It’s for horizontal, the horizon. It’s for far. It’s for action. It’s for sharp and not smooth and so on.
And that’s that’s the list of attributes that that you find in Tibetan Buddhist diagrams. And I think the Taoists also came up with the same same polarity. So the question for you is, how is that done without without you know the instruments that Alan talked about without Transcranial magnetic stimulation to knock out the left hemisphere so you know what it’s like without one or I have a trick where I put cold water in someone’s ear which activates the opposite hemisphere and we can your your colleague Richie Davidson at Madison has shown that the left side of the brain is the positive one. And in your monks, there’s a world record for positivity. The Buddhist monks have got the world record for activation of the left side.
We know that the left side’s the the positive one. When you’re depressed, it’s the right side that’s overactive. So without all of those modern instruments How did you know? How how how did how did your tradition come up with with those with those diagrams? Although I cannot fully remember in detail what were the different characteristics attributed to the true sides of the human body.
However, I vaguely remember that, for example, the one side of of the human body and and the channels that are associated with it are associated primarily with conceptualization that have to do with external objects. So externalization. And then one side is associated more with all the various conceptualization that has to do that deals primarily with subjective experience. So there are there is a recognition of two primarily different functions that they perform. But as to the the specific question of how this may have been come about, it is difficult to say.
One could imagine that perhaps it was based upon the collective knowledge of individual meditators who, as he or she progressed in one’s deepened meditation, probably built up a kind of an experiential understanding, which was then passed on. But but there was no systematic study with a theory. And then, of course, now this is more on it’s the faith side. The we believe, this is some Buddha as well as some Bodhisattvas, you see the I mean, some other occasion, some other period, they already, you see, gained some experience. Then, you see, on this planet, you see, they just repeat their own past experience.
They are also to believe. That’s a belief in the faith side. Not topic here. Max Bennett, before I ask you to put a question or make a comment, could you just tell us about that practice of putting the magnet to the brain? Does it work?
You’ve seen it happen in your laboratory in Sydney. Yes. Well, what I think you’re referring to is that following on this discussion of the different capacities of the two hemispheres in the brain, if for example you have something, a stroke for example in your left parietal cortex here, then the right side of your body becomes alien to you. You won’t recognize it, you don’t want to have anything to do with it at all, and if people point out to you that you have got a right side of your body, you’re horrified. Now with transcranial magnetic stimulation, if we stimulate the intact correctly working parietal cortex of the in the other hemisphere, then gradually that horror that you have on the right side of your body is lost.
So what we have here is by interfering with the intact normal parietal cortex, we’ve somehow brought a balance into effect here. But I must emphasize We haven’t got a clue what’s going on Not our faintest clue. We whack these magnets around the old brain We’re not quite clear where the magnetic focus is and all we can do as we’ve been doing now since Descartes is so human beings do this or that. In this case, they don’t find one side of their body abhorrent. But just on that theme, something which doesn’t appear to be lateralized to one hemisphere or the other is our skill to play rather complex games, for example chess.
And in chess we can now show that if you stimulate the frontal lobes, this is a normal human being now, not someone who’s had a stroke, you can, with about forty percent of the players, improve their playing. Again, this is a wonderful phenomenon and we haven’t got the faintest clue what’s going on. All we know is that if we interfere with the normal electrical activity that’s going on in your brain now as you perhaps pay attention to what I’m saying, if we interfere with that and goodness knows what’s happening to the 100 billion neurons that make up the brain, each of which has about 10,000 connections with other neurons, so we’re dealing with a figure of 10 raised to the power of 15 connections. We haven’t got a clue which ones are turning off, which ones might be excited by this stimulation. It’s a phenomenon.
But in one case, it does indicate that there are a lot of things that we know nothing about. In Western science Buddhists do it without magnets. Never. I don’t ask for a reply to that particular comment. I think I spoke for too long somehow then.
I wonder sometimes, Max, how you get volunteers when you don’t know what you’re doing to people. Right? Mostly, you volunteer yourself, actually. Okay. However, I’ve also heard on other occasions from neurobiologists that if an individual suffers a damage, you know, say one part of the brain, gradually, the other part you know, some other undamaged part of the brain will learn to adapt and acquire and perform the functions.
If I might use the opportunity for an advertising campaign, My laboratory showed last year that connections in the brain, in the normal brain, are being made and unmade over periods of twenty minutes. Not over days or months or as you’re growing up only, but all the time your brain is a ferment in a sense of connections being made and broken. So what we call the plasticity there is enormous for making up damaged conditions. Well, that takes us I suppose down amongst the particles where Paul Davies spends an awful lot of his time. There has been a suggestion, I think it was Jack Eccles who was at this university, who talked about there being some sort of quantum effect which was the basis for the way brains work.
But be that as it may, Paul, what’s your take on this duopoly? I’d like to just pick up the central theme of Alan Snyder’s opening remarks and unconscious minds and conscious minds, and address the question, how is it that we can come to not only know the world about us, but to understand it as well? I’m a scientist and scientists sort of take it for granted that the scientific method will reveal to us something about the world which is otherwise hidden. When Newton saw the apple fall, he saw a falling apple. He didn’t see a set of differential equations linking the motion of the apple to the motion of the moon.
That is a sort of hidden level of knowledge which comes out only after following certain arcane procedures of experimentation and writing squiggles on blackboards and occasionally having those leaps of intuition, those blinding flashes of insight that Alan Snyder was talking about. I might say I’ve never had one, but I know it in a in a diminished way from doing crosswords. I can you you you study the clue, you know, it’s it’s cryptic. You you look at it, you think, well, I have no idea what the answer is and then quick as a flash, it’s in your mind. Where did it come from?
Sometimes you can work the clue out by going through it step by step, but more often than not, it’ll just come ready made into your mind. What an astonishing thing. Now, I sometimes see doing science as a bit like that, that nature presents us with cryptic clues because the laws of nature, the laws of physics are written in a mathematical code. You don’t see them in daily life. And when we do experiments, we somehow uncover the answers to these clues and we fill in the crossword and it all hangs together in this wonderfully coherent way.
What an extraordinary world we live in. One which is laced through and controlled by these economical beautiful mathematical laws. And yet we human beings can come to know that somehow through both the activities of the conscious and the unconscious mind. I still find this absolutely astounding even though so many people take it for granted. And I really have no explanation, though I’m sure there is one in science somewhere of these extraordinary leaps which sometimes lead us to make connections that nobody has seen before.
I know Roger Penrose has talked about a platonic realm of mathematical forms and occasionally we can sort of break through into that realm and Pluck ready made some ingenious mathematical description of part of nature. I’m not sure that that really is the answer, but that’s the way it seems. It seems like a voyage of discovery. So I don’t think there’s a question in this. It’s really a celebration of human ability to be able to make sense of the world.
It’s not just observation, it’s understanding. That’s the mystery. Mystery indeed. I wonder whether that sort of revelation occurs perhaps to people like the Dalai Lama that that sudden realization of something that you’ve slept on, that you have your brain tick over and unconsciously suddenly it comes. Maybe you could ask.
Do you do crosswords? Slow crosswords. To better. Actually, I’ve seen a lot of people spend hours trying to solve crossword puzzles. I noticed.
Especially on the plane, spending spending long time to try to solve the problem, but I find that bit of a waste of time. I think that from the what’s it? Buddhist explanation, especially in Vajrayāna. Now we categorize different levels of mind. Some now, for example, when at this moment, awakened state, we use the say, eye organ or all the sense organs and also the using the language.
So that time, the certain level of his mind occur and functioning or active. Then, say, dream dream time, the another level of mind, then some sort of some senses, some level, then at that time, sort of rest. But a certain mind now become active. Then without dream, deep sleep, another level of mind. Then likewise faint, completely faint.
So no breath or heartbeat. So another level. Then go that go that the ultimately, when we are dying, even brain function cease. The quite often, even nowadays, occasionally, this happen. It’s just some not necessarily very high practitioner meditator, But, you see, at the time I mean, at the at the at the at the time of death after death, the body remain very fresh.
So we explain the subtle mind still functioning in the body. So the brain already completely ceases function. So the that is the in the most subtle mind. So I believe this is some sort of imprints So lot of these phenomenons of unconscious phenomenon that we see from the Buddhist point of view, perhaps we could see them more as a kind of an effect that we see of the different imprints left at different levels of consciousness that I just spoke about. So you you have experiences that leaves the imprint at the gross level of mind.
You have experiences at a different states of consciousness such as dream sleep where there is another level of imprint that is left. So a lot of the phenomenon of what we see as kind of an unconscious phenomenon, perhaps they could be understood more in terms of these effects of these imprints. Max? Sorry. I was going to say I was trying to bring out the idea of not just levels of consciousness but levels of knowing.
There are two ways we can know about the world. One is through our direct phenomenal experience like you see the apple fall, but the other is this deep theoretical knowledge that you get by uncovering the mathematical order in nature which isn’t apparent to us in daily life and is an extraordinary ability that human beings through science can come to know the world at this deeper level and see the linkages between the motion of the apple and the motion of the moon or the masses of the fundamental particles and the forces that act upon them and all of the hidden paraphernalia that comes out of modern fundamental physics. What an extraordinary thing that we can know the world in these two quite different ways. How has this ability for us to understand the world through science at this deeper hidden level, how has that evolved? How has that emerged in the history of humanity?
I find that not only mysterious but very inspiring the fact that we are able to do this, that we were able to come to know the world in that way. Max, do you want to comment? Yes. Yes. His Holiness touched on dreaming and this is comes into the area of subconscious matters of that kind and I thought perhaps interesting comment to make would be what your modern neurobiology thinks is going on, knows that’s what’s going on to some extent during dreaming.
And during the normal wake day when you go about your business, you’re attending to things and you’re concentrating on something and you’re watching television or whatever you’re doing, there are different parts of the brain which are active, but there are some parts of the brain which are always active right throughout the waking day. The frontal lobes here, the parietal cortex which I mentioned earlier and the part deep in there called the cingulate cortex. When you go to sleep at night, if you’re a reasonable sleeper and you go into deep sleep, those three regions are completely turned off. And we now know that in certain kinds of meditation, during a normal day, you do a meditation, those same three regions are turned off, what we call the executive regions of the brain. When however later on in your sleep you go into dream sleep, which is His Holiness’s comment on, something else happens.
And during that period, two very interesting parts of the brain light up and become very active. One of them is a part of the brain which we’ve certainly determined is concerned with your emotional life, with fear, anger, being generous, envious, these sorts of things. That becomes very active during dream sleep. And the other