Thompson on waking, dreaming and deep sleep

Continuing the recent line of inquiry, one might also find the Thompson thread of interest. His new book investigates waking, dreaming and deep sleep, aka our gross, subtle and causal bodies. A few brief excerpts applicable here:

"But whereas the Advaitin takes this minimal selfhood to be a transcendental witness consciousness, I think itʼs open to us to maintain that it is my embodied self or bodily subjectivity, or what phenomenologists would call my pre-personal lived body. In this way, I think we can remove the Advaita conception of dreamless sleep from its native metaphysical framework and graft it onto a naturalist conception of the embodied mind."


"I describe a dialogue on this question I had with the Dalai Lama at his refugee home in Dharamsala, India, and I explain the basis in Buddhist philosophy for the Dalai Lama’s view that consciousness transcends the brain. I argue, however, that there’s no scientific evidence to support this view. All the evidence available to us indicates that consciousness, including pure awareness, is contingent on the brain. Nevertheless, my viewpoint isn’t a materialist one."