A Transcendental Philosophy

	Book review on Zen Brain Reflections: Reviewing recent developments in meditation and states of consciousness by James H. Austin Reviewed by Peter Fenwick, 2009 published in Network Review No 100
	(order this book from amazon.co.uk)

It was with great pleasure that I unpacked my copy of Zen Brain Reflections.  This is Jim Austin's second book, following Zen and the Brain and looks comprehensively at the latest research into meditative states and altered states of consciousness.  Jim is the ideal person to write this book as he combines a perceptive and enquiring mind with  an interest in altered states of consciousness that led him to find his own Zen teacher and spend a considerable time in the Zendo of a temple  in Kyoto.  He is a knowledgeable academic who has sat at the feet of many of the great neurology teachers who were practising in England and America after the second world war, and  importantly, he also has  the artistic capability of the true creative genius. 

I have always maintained that a scientific  understanding of consciousness can only be achieved through an understanding of the wider states of human experience,   especially by those people who have studied with precision and care their own inner states of mind and the way  that these can develop into wide expansions of consciousness. 

As Jim says in his introduction, this is the second book in a quest for the inconceivable, and he introduces it with the quotation from Andre Gide 'One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.'  The first part of the book is devoted to Zen and the brain, bringing us up to date with current neurophysiological research, brain imaging, and the mechanisms which underpin alterations in consciousness.  It is a mine of well presented data, comprehensive in its range, which allows both the initiated and the uninitiated to gain an understanding of where our current neuroscience is with respect to the correlates of altered states of consciousness. If you have no knowledge of neuroscience  this half  of the book is not for you.  You will soon be lost in a maze of alpha-2 receptors, norepinephrine dopamine, PET and MRI scans, and some wonderful accounts of cerebral rhythms, for which  you need to understand the scientific rather than the popular concepts of alpha, gamma and delta rhythms.  But for the neuroscientist, this is a treasure trove of current literature that is easy to read, never claims to be all encompassing, but does show how far we have got in our understanding of the mechanisms of consciousness. 

This section also explains some of the main features of Zen.  For example, why pay attention to the tanden (the  lower part of the abdomen where the Zen initiate focuses his breath while doing Zen counting)?  What is a koan and how does it work?  He gives a number of characteristics and I fully agree with them all, but resonated with 'The koan is frustrating.  Carefully calibrated degrees of emotional frustration can help 'stir the pot.''  For example, 'Who am I?' is a standard koan.  'What is my original face?' and 'Where is one?' are others.   All extraordinarily powerful koans that the author has used.

The latter half of the book is the most interesting for the general reader. It  takes as its basis the kensho (flash of awakening) that Jim had while on a station platform waiting for a  London tube train.  He analyses this flash in considerable depth and spends some time explaining  why the moon is so prominent in Zen and the experience of moonlight so widespread in Zen philosophy. He describes how the experience of moonlight on a bright summer's day in London, was part of the onset of his kensho state. He analyses this in terms of visual pathways, and suggests that those pathways carrying colour are turned off in the experience, leaving a black and white softer illuminated world.

An important facet of this book is Jim's ability to move from scientific observation to  the wonderful world of allegory and the extension through poetry into alternative states where consciousness can be grasped in a different way, and explained in metre and rhyme.   He goes on to describe poetically, with his very wide knowledge of Zen, references to moonlight throughout Zen literature.  Here is a poem which followed the awakening of Chang Chiu-Ch'en when he heard a frog croak:

In a moonlight night, on a spring day,
The croak of a frog
Pierces through the whole cosmos and turns it into a
Single family.

The book shows that Jim has moved from the position of Zen initiate, kensho experiencer, Western neurologist, to that of the transcendental philosopher.  It reflects the insights of Ralph Whitman, Wei Wu Wei, Merrell Wolff, Eckhart Tolle and others in our Western culture who have bridged the gap from the ordinary to the transcendental.   In discussing the fields of unity he says 'At present, you and I are still trapped inside our usual self/ other mode. As long as we are, we cannot step out of our own skins and deeply realise that 'this' individual self is an integral part of 'that' whole vast 'other' universe.'  And this is the message of the new transcendental philosopher. Our mode of perception is wrong. The subject/object split which we use in our daily life  leads to the false self which does not exist and which covers over and prevents the move to awakening, the sudden insights of kensho and the heredity that we all potentially have as humans.

(order this book from amazon.co.uk)