I was struck by the parallels between Buddhism and Christianity. They both have holy books dating from around 500BC. They both have holy fathers from their founding eras and saints dotted about the years since then. Buddhism goes in for large scale monasticism, Christians used to. Buddhism is starting to fade away, rather as Christianity has in most of Western Europe. I was struck by a quote google turned up from Thailand: ‘the monks of this northern Thai village no longer perform one of the defining rituals of Buddhism, the early-morning walk through the community to collect food. Instead, the temple’s abbot dials a local restaurant and has takeout delivered’. And they both go in for souls. Christians allow one everlasting soul per person, created at the time of conception, whereas Buddhists, if I have got it right, allow souls to move from host to host, with the quality of host 2 being, to some extent anyway, dependent on performance in host 1. Not clear what Buddhists do about the creation of souls, which must be necessary from time to time given the way that the population is growing. Perhaps there is a steady promotion of souls from lower to higher animals.
Another parallel was the interest taken by both Christians – at least of the Catholic sort – and Buddhists in death, with both making something of a ceremony of it, at least when circumstances permit. With the shared objective perhaps being, in the words used at the end of the Catholic mass, 'to go in peace'. And with both making something of a study of it. So in this book we get quite a lengthy discussion of the process of death and of near death experiences. Of the state of thukdam (see google). Oxymoronically, one might say a healthy interest in the whole business.
Then there was an observation by Thomson to the effect that while in the west we teach people to read books, in the east they teach people to read their own minds – and, to a rather greater extent than might otherwise be possible, to control them. I was persuaded that by efforts of will, Buddhist meditators can make their minds do stuff which is visible to an EEG or an FMRI machine.
A few references to Proust and his descriptions of the businesses of waking and falling asleep – something he was, as rather a bad sleeper, rather good at. I was both interested to re-read what Proust had to say and amused to find that the two references which I checked came in the very first pages of this very long book.
Quite a lot of space is given to lucid dreaming, a well-documented phenomenon whereby you can, in a sense be both awake and dreaming at the same time. Awake in the sense that you know you are dreaming, a knowledge said to have a quite different quality from dreaming that you are dreaming. It is possible, in a limited way, to communicate with the outside world while in a lucid dream. You can also control the way the dream goes. So, for example, in a lucid dream you can do stuff like fly about - and fly through walls, although, oddly, it seems that many lucid dreamers find this easier feet first than head first. You might also turn the page of a book, and then turn it back again, to find that what is on the page has changed - a sure sign that you are in a dream, rather than awake. I think lucid dreaming, as well as being interesting and useful, is also something of a toy in California. Google finds lots of it, for example reference 1.
Quite a lot of space is given to what we used, when I was an undergraduate, to call bubbles. The sort of stuff that hippies from the those days of flower power talked about after they had taken a quick snort of the right stuff. Perhaps not astral planes but tendencies in that direction. There is also a fair bit of repetition. Nonetheless, an interesting and accessible book which I was glad to have come across.
Furthermore, there is plenty for experimental neurologists to bite on. Buddhists can do stuff which is scientifically both interesting and useful.
Reference 1: https://www.monroeinstitute.org/.
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