What is Consciousness? What is the Soul? Who or What is Aware of Awareness? Buddhism and the Semantics of Self/No-self. A Zen Koan-like Exercise. (Heavy man, very heavy!)

Following are excerpts from an interview with Michael Pollan in the May 2026 edition of the Buddhist magazine, Lion’s Roar, with my comments {noted like this}. 

Q: What is consciousness? In what way is the soul a good definition for it, and in what way is it not?

A: Consciousness and the soul have an old relationship. The people who talk about the soul often do it in a religious context, and it has supernatural implications that consciousness doesn’t always have. But soul talk has infiltrated consciousness talk in lots of interesting ways. Consciousness is sort of the modern substitute for the soul.

My definition is very simple. Consciousness is awareness. Experience is another good definition.

Q: What does the Buddhist concept of no-self teach us about consciousness?

A: No-self is really significant for consciousness research. [In the West,] there has been an assumption that the self and consciousness are very closely allied and that when you lose your self or your ego, there’s nothing left. What Buddhism teaches is that there is still something left. There is still consciousness. It doesn’t depend on a self. And I think the research bears that out. {But who or what is there to cognize consciousness? Perhaps there is such a thing as an “individuated consciousness”?}

There’s an interesting book written by a German philosopher named Thomas Metzinger, who’s a big meditator. He’s collected thousands of examples of people describing consciousness without a self, and he points out that we all experience it every morning when we wake up. In the first milliseconds before our self reconsolidates and we realize who we are and where we are and what time it is, there’s a moment of selflessness. We all have this experience. The other way we have it, of course, is on psychedelics. {This is an interesting observation about a short moment upon transitioning from sleep to wakefulness when we are aware, but that awareness has not yet clothed itself in the identity-trappings of the ego. But it would still be a sense of an inner “naked” self that is capable of perceiving this state. He earlier equated "self" with "ego", but maybe there is a "self" other than "ego". ​Can there be a sense of individuation that does not carry all the trappings associated with "ego"? It begs the question of who is there to record and recall that experience. After all, it is not an experience unless there is an experiencer. The Vedantic view describes a state of consciousness called “turiya”, the “fourth state”, in addition to the three states of waking, dreaming sleep, and dreamless sleep. Turiya exists at the same time that any one of the other states is existing. It would appear that this fleeting moment being described, transitioning from sleeping to waking, is describing a glimpse of turiya.}

My book How to Change Your Mind was about that. I’ve had psychedelic experiences in which the self was completely dissolved, but I was still conscious. {Who or what is the “I” that was still conscious?}

[Scottish philosopher] David Hume said something very similar back in the 1700s. He said, “I went looking for the self in my mind, and all I found there were perceptions and thoughts and feelings and emotions, but no perceiver of those perceptions, no feeler of those feelings.” And he raised questions as to whether the self was a real thing. Indeed, if you do go looking for the self, good luck. You’re not going to find it. {Hume was looking for the self in his mind. Perhaps there is a self that is not in the mind, but rather outside the mind. After all, there is more to what we are than just a mind. This again raises the question of who or what is the “I” that found there were perceptions, etc. If not a “perceiver” of some kind, maybe not something existing in the mind, but something existing outside of the mind that “sensed”, if not “perceived”. I’ve always maintained that it is more accurate to say, “I am, therefore I think” instead of “I think, therefore I am”}