Alan Wallace on the Dalai Lama and the Science in Consciousness

by heathervescent

Salon has an article about B. Alan Wallace and the Buddhist study of consciousness.

The Dalai Lama himself is deeply invested in reconciling science and spirituality. He meets regularly with Western scientists, looking for links between Buddhism and the latest research in physics and neuroscience. In his book "The Universe in a Single Atom," he wrote, "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."

The rest of the article is a question and answer session between Salon writer, Steve Paulson, and ex-monk B. Alan Wallace. Here's another tidbit:

Of course, the Tibetan Buddhist tradition has reincarnation. Is that testable scientifically?

Well, here's the hypothesis. Your psyche emerged some time while you were in your mother's womb. It's continuing to evolve, and eventually it's going to implode back into the substrate, carry on as a disembodied continuum of consciousness and then reincarnate. There's the theory in a nutshell. Is that one testable? My short answer is yes, I think this is a testable hypothesis, and in principle it really should be able to be repudiated. But we're also looking for positive evidence.

It's an interesting read and a harbinger of the coming coalescence of science and spirituality.

| 11/27/06 | Beliefs