In today's Los Angeles Times, author Jonah Lehrer discusses research by neuroscientists into the nature of consciousness. Scientists have traced much of how we experience ourselves and our lives to parts of the brain. Fear is generated by the amygdala, for example. Consciousness itself seems to have some connection to the frontal cortex.
"It turns out that there is nothing inherently mysterious about those 3 pounds of wrinkled flesh inside the skull," Lehrer writes. "There is no ghost in the machine." According to science, your brain is made up of 100 billion electrical cells, but not one of them is I. "In fact," Lehrer continues, "you don't even exist. You are simply an elaborate cognitive illusion, an 'epiphenomenon' of the cortex. Our mystery is denied."
Lehrer concludes that science must be missing something. But maybe it isn't. In the Tripitaka, consciousness (vinnana) is one of the Five Skandhas, which the Buddha taught are empty of intrinsic self. According to this teaching, a permanent "self" is an elaborate cognitive illusionWhat is the self? Who are we? Just because science doesn't find the self we expect it to find doesn't mean there's no mystery.
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I often have the hunch that any seeming “existence” is actually an agreement to resonate in sympathy.
It was Jane Wagner, through her life/creative partner Lily Tomlin, who said, “What is reality but a collective hunch?”