RIA Novosti: Tatiana Chernigovskaya: Why the universe needs thinking beings

In her interview to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, Tatiana Chernigovskaya shared her impressions about her recent meeting with the world Buddhist spiritual leader and Buddhist monastic scholars and about her discussions with leading Russian and international researchers studying consciousness. She talked about: the risks and threats posed by artificial intelligence (AI); the role of education in human-human and human-animal interactions; and the mysteries of evolution, language, brain, the soul and life. Tatiana Chernigovskaya was interviewed by journalist Olga Lipich.

‘It turns the picture upside down’

Could you please share your impressions of the 1st International Animal Consciousness Conference? What are the prospects for future research in this area, in your opinion?

It is strange to talk about future prospects in the age of Apocalypse. But generally speaking, a subject of animal consciousness, as well as everything related to consciousness, is a minefield. It is a field where you always face the risk of running into either madmen or maniacs within science, who for some reason decided that they can work in this area. The conference in Dharamsala exceeded all my expectations. It turned out to be a much more meaningful experience than I had anticipated. It was interesting and engaging and I learned a lot of new things.

Could you highlight some of these new things?

We used to believe that the octopus has a nervous system in each of its arms, which it does, and that it does not have a centralised nervous system. Research presented at the conference reveals something new. Professor Jennifer Mather of the University of Lethbridge in Canada, who has been studying cephalopod molluscs for many years, reported research findings showing that octopuses have a central brain.

I also learnt something new about bees from a wonderful talk by Professor Lars Chittka of the Research Centre for Psychology at Queen Mary University of London. And the researcher himself is absolutely amazing — highly intelligent, articulate and loving his bees dearly. He has been studying bees and bumblebees for over 20 years and has written a book about their "mind". According to Professor Chittka, these insects have their own "dance language", a flexible memory, remarkable cognitive abilities and a 55-70% chance of having consciousness.

Also, there were some rather questionable assumptions, for example, about fish. Supposedly, fish have self-awareness: they look at their reflection and recognise their own image in a mirror. It sounds beautiful though. A presentation on "intelligent" fish was made by Professor Masanori Koda of the Graduate School of Science at Osaka City University, Japan.

The conference in Dharamsala showed that the idea of animal consciousness is not an epiphenomenon, or a by-product. It should be taken seriously, as I had always believed. This is supported by experimental data. Obviously, the data should be verified and validated — not because this or that experiment was wrong. This is not about the experiment, but about the way the research findings are interpreted. Experimental outcomes should be analysed in detail, including the experimental design and set-up, and what each one of the details means.

The Dalai Lama said that all living creatures, including insects, are sentient beings. They just do not have the same consciousness as humans. What do you think about that?

It is an amazing thought in the sense that it is not about dividing the world in two: these things have consciousness and those do not. It is about the fact that there are many different types and levels of consciousness. It turns the picture upside down.

What do you think about the efforts to find consciousness and self-awareness in plants as well? A relevant study was also presented at the conference by a Spanish philosopher Paco Calvo, who published a book "Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence".

I find it very interesting. Some time ago, I came across Maurice Maeterlinck’s essay "The Intelligence of Flowers". And not so long ago, there was an article reporting that if plants are mistreated, water-deprived, or injured, they "cry" in a frequency range that is inaudible to the human ear, but can be recorded by certain devices.

Still, even Buddhists do not consider plants sentient beings.

Beautiful eyelashes or well-done steak 

In practical terms, how can animal consciousness studies and conferences like that help the animals?

This is a separate story. If we are absolutely honest, we should stop eating not only beef, mutton, goat and chicken, but everything else as well. Even if Asians come forward and say: let’s eat pickled or dried cockroaches, that won’t help either, because cockroaches also demonstrate signs of consciousness. And some researchers, as we have seen, are also trying to find consciousness in plants. So, what are we going to do? What are we going to eat?

I even tell my students remorsefully: you look at a cow somewhere in the Swiss Alps or in our green pastures and think — what lovely hair it has, expressive eyes, beautiful long eyelashes! And then, you go to a restaurant and order a well-done steak. So, it’s either beautiful eyelashes or a well-done steak.

Naturally, our species is more important to us. But there is a growing public concern about animal welfare issues today, when geese and ducks are specially fattened for foie gras and live crayfish are thrown into boiling water. Animal Ethics Committees are trying to ensure that no medical experiments or scientific studies are carried out on animals without anaesthesia, but I doubt that anaesthesia will be given to worms...

We must acknowledge the fact that we are not the only ones suffering, and we should not inflict needless suffering. This should be taught to children from an early age. A child should know that if he or she tears off a butterfly’s wing, it hurts and it must never be done.

Isn’t it time that humanity reconsidered its attitude towards consumption in a fundamental way? So that humans become more frugal and stop devouring the world around. We should be always conscious and mindful in our consumption, especially when it comes to killing other living beings to sustain our own life.

I like reading historical books and memoirs. I do not like reading novels, because I can write a novel myself, but the good ones have already been written... I am much more interested in the things that actually happened. For instance, when you read Mikhail Pyliaev about old Petersburg, you learn that people were worried that streets in St Petersburg would be buried under horse manure because of the huge number of horse-driven carts. They thought it would be impossible to walk and breathe. But once horses were replaced as the means of transportation by cars, the problem disappeared.

Why am I saying this when answering your question? Because the issue we are talking about will go away. There will be artificial intelligence, like GPT AI 18, for instance, and the issues with meat consumption will resolve itself because there won’t be any meat-eaters. The AI will find other sources of energy for itself. And as the Dalai Lama said, eventually the planet will end up in fire (according to Buddhist cosmology — Editor’s note).

AI as an "actor" and Buddhist cosmology

The Dalai Lama believes that only living beings have consciousness and that artificial intelligence cannot have it. Do you agree with that? Can consciousness exist independently, beyond the living body’s natural limits?

That we do not know. It could be a very good imitation. Anthropomorphic robots are getting better and better. A robot in front of you may mimic your facial expressions, sympathise with you and worry so much that you will start crying. Yet, it will be a perfect imitation, not consciousness. It is just good acting.

But it is devious manipulation, I am not in the theatre...

Yes, it is manipulation with a physical likeness. The robot itself has nothing to do with it, as long as it has no personality. But it raises the question as to whether these super-complex systems may develop a personality. The development of personality in artificial intelligence is a singularity analogous to the Big Bang. There will be no way out of it — we will be doomed. They will start suing us.

Then we will unplug them.

These are just tales for kids that we will be able to turn them off. You can rest assured they will make certain that they will not be unplugged from anything they need. That is the first thing they will do.

How do you view the Buddhist cosmology outlined by the Dalai Lama, according to which consciousness is infinite, it has neither beginning nor end? The world arises from emptiness for the living beings to dwell in, and this world is coming to its end in fire through our karmic actions.

One can, of course, view it as a metaphor or a fairy tale about trolls roaming around Iceland or Baba Yaga flying around these parts in a mortar. But still, it is a millennia-old concept. I do not think people have been rambling about just a fairy tale for thousands of years.

The fact that researchers do not quite understand it today and cannot find the evidence for it does not imply it is wrong. Nor have we found proof to refute it. That is, we have to "fight": someone has to prove something to someone else... That is an interesting question.

Consciousness and zombies

What is consciousness? How does science define it today?

The amount of scientific information about the brain today is enormous. You cannot even read all of it. But it is clear that a new theory is needed to answer questions about consciousness. Konstantin Anokhin (Director of the Institute for Advanced Brain Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences — Editor’s note), who organised the 1st Animal Consciousness Conference, has been working in this field.

So far, there has been no universally agreed definition of consciousness. It is difficult to reach agreement in science — it is a huge space.

On the one hand is the statement that consciousness can only be of a high level. In other words, consciousness is self-awareness. Seen from this perspective, a few dozen percentage points of the Earth’s inhabitants do not possess consciousness. Thus, they cease to belong to the genus Homo Sapiens because they do not even suspect that it is possible to see oneself clearly and objectively through reflection and introspection, and to be aware of one’s actions, words, and thoughts.

On the other hand, consciousness is a kind of response. In this case, even infusoria have consciousness. Here again, Buddhists, for instance, believe that all living beings have feelings and consciousness. But in scientific circles, few serious scholars would support such a view.

In fact, neither of these views can stand up to scrutiny. They are two polar opposites, with the vast gulf between them. You can easily find a hundred people who will readily answer your question of what consciousness is. But these answers are of zero value for exact science.

Nonetheless, at the 1st Animal Consciousness Conference and on the sidelines of the event, there was a great deal of discussion about consciousness with your direct involvement. How do you understand what "consciousness" is in order to talk about it?

In the course of the conference discussions, I settled on the idea of recognising different types or levels of consciousness. Those types that are shallower, rougher, less nuanced are befitting lower animals. Some types of consciousness are found only in higher animals. And there are types that might be accessible only to humans.

However, the topic of consciousness may become even more complicated today, given the mess with artificial intelligence. Can we consider machines, artificial intelligence conscious, or are they zombies in the philosophical sense? Zombies behaving as if they had consciousness. Just like us, only they are fake.

‘How do we know this is life?’

Do the "LIVE/ DEAD" criteria help to distinguish an AI as an "actor" or a "fake" from the true consciousness? What are these criteria in modern science?

It is a very difficult question. What about rocks or minerals that grow in a certain way? Obviously, there is a biological definition of life. There is also a physics perspective. Take, for instance, ‘What is life?’ by physicist Erwin Schrödinger.

In his book, Schrödinger not only deals with the questions of the mechanism of heredity and negative entropy, but also speculates about human consciousness, drawing on the ancient Indian philosophy doctrines of "Atman" and "Brahman". But the book was published long ago, in the 1940s. Is it still relevant today?

It is a very useful book. But as we are actively searching for life, the question today is whether we are able to recognise life? How do we know it is life? It could be a very different type of life. Not life as we know it, based not on the elements we are used to, but some silicon-based lifeforms, for instance. Theoretically, it is possible.

Or what if we all end up blowing each other, while the artificial intelligence will survive? Then, it will become the highest form of life on Earth. The planet will thrive, because the AI will not spoil everything around it — at least not on the same scale as humans do today. It does not need food — solar energy is enough for it. Perfect! Or what if it simply develops to the point where it takes over humanity? Then, I repeat: there is no doubt that the AI will figure out what to do to retain access to energy so that no one could turn it off.

‘If we wait, we might see a Plato among them’

Do I understand correctly that we are approaching the point where we will have to revise our views about animals’ capacity to feel and that we can say that even lower animals have feelings, just like humans?

We are approaching this point, with one correction: who are these "we"? Many physiologists will not even talk about it. Psychologists, philosophers and some other experts will, but cautiously.

What do you personally think: do animals and insects have consciousness?

Again, it depends on what we regard as consciousness. If we take the viewpoint of Nick Humphrey, a keynote speaker at the 1st Animal Consciousness Conference in Dharamsala, then, my answer is in the affirmative. Different species have different types of consciousness, and perhaps not all of them. (Nicholas Humphrey is an English neuropsychologist and Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. According to Professor Humphrey, animals can be classified into three classes based on the level of consciousness: unconscious animals, such as worms and jellyfish; animals that have cognitive awareness but no sensory awareness, or phenomenal consciousness, such as bees and octopuses; and finally, animals that have both cognitive awareness and phenomenal consciousness, among them are parrots, dogs and humans — Editor’s note.)

But if you asked Viktor Allakhverdov, for instance, with whom we are pals (Viktor Allakhverdov, Professor in the Department of General Psychology at St Petersburg University — Editor’s note), he would question that. Animals have consciousness — what are you talking about? Let alone insects. That is if we talk about consciousness only as an "auditor" who comes to check on us.

It is a different matter when we talk about different layers or levels of consciousness: this is possible. Professor Alexander Kaplan (Head of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Neuro-Computer Interfaces at Lomonosov Moscow State University — Editor’s note) is currently studying Buddhist monks in Nepal as they engage in tantric meditations. During these meditations, their consciousness goes through different stages (according to the Buddhist teachings, there are different levels of consciousness: from rough to the most refined "clear light mind" — Editor’s note).

However, if we put aside the levels of consciousness and talk about types of consciousness, I like the idea that animals have consciousness, but not the same consciousness as humans. We do not expect them to be Plato or Aristotle. But by the way, we may wait and see. They may turn out to be very intelligent within their field. And, there is a wealth of evidence to support that.

Then, we return to the question of legislation to prevent animal cruelty.

There is a huge distance between an idea, even a good one, and the law.

Ethics is more important than declensions

According to the Dalai Lama, in order to achieve peace, harmony and happiness on Earth, people need proper education. They should be taught the basics of ethics and emotional hygiene. Kindness, love and compassion for others should be cultivated right from the very beginning. What role does education play, in your opinion?

No doubt, moral principles and basic human values should be taught from an early age, from kindergarten onwards. Not only teachers, but also parents and grandparents should be involved in this. Do not steal anything from anyone — not because you will be caught and punished, but because it is shameful. If you have finished your juice, throw the carton into the bin. Don’t you dare tormenting the cat! Let me step on your foot − see how the cat feels. Young children do not know these things. They need to be taught values in a way that is appropriate for their age.

Intelligent educators can design relevant academic programmes. If, as the Dalai Lama says, somewhere in the world there is an ethics programme that is successfully taught in school, we should take it, study it, adapt it and implement it.

This is because our children, when stepping outside of their educational institutions, can surf the internet ten times faster than us, but they know nothing about life and their emotions. Do children know, for instance, that it is hard for them and everyone around them when they throw themselves on the floor in a shop in full tantrum? If you record their behaviour on video, show this video to them and explain what emotions are and how to deal with them without hurting anyone, everyone will be happier.

We could probably make cartoons about emotions — for preventive intervention?

This is a separate and very specific job that should be done by educators and other professionals. It is not about coming up with a hundred and fifth way of teaching declensions, but about teaching children life and decent behaviour. Grammar mistakes are a hundred times less important than what we are talking about now.

In some schools in India, children have happiness classes. Bhutan has the Ministry of Happiness and it measures Gross National Happiness. However, most government agencies around the world do not use the word "happiness" very often. What, do you think, is more important: education and cognition or laws restricting inappropriate behaviour?

Legislation is a good thing. But adults emerge from children: in case someone is unaware of that fact, I am happy to announce it. A kid, a teenager should not even think that it is possible to behave in a way that is not a moral way. Children should not even think of tormenting a cat, pushing and jostling, or throwing a tantrum, and so on. Ethical action should become a habitual behaviour, like taking the next step when you walk, or like brushing your teeth in the morning when you get up.

For that, children should be taught. And we appear to have already lost a few generations. Their parents grew up like that (during perestroika — without much regard to ethics and upbringing), and even their grandmothers did. A normal grandmother should stay at home with her grandchildren, knit socks, cook pancakes and teach them about life, and she should be warm-hearted. Pipe dreams...

The soul and the joker

In Buddhism, there is no Creator God and no soul as such. There is innermost subtle consciousness passing from one bodily incarnation to the next (rebirth). Does modern science come any closer to defining what the soul is, do you think?

No, I don’t think it does. I am speaking for myself here, not for all science. I think the soul is not a category that science should deal with. Science is about something else. That does not mean that I deny the existence of the soul. But science does not deal with such things.

Do spells, curses and other ways of affecting the soul, a person, by words work and why? Or are these all just stories?

I am certain that it works. Yet, I cannot explain why, scientifically. For this, we would need an experiment in the scientific sense of the term; that is, when someone is bewitched or spellbound and all the impact is recorded... But you will not be able to register this today, just as we cannot register the soul. This does not mean that it does not exist. It is just not in the field of natural sciences.

What do you think intuition is? Is it entering upper layers of the information space or what? After all, modern science addresses these questions, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does address these questions, and very seriously. But again, it is a bummer, because the definition of intuition implies negative connotations. That is, it refers to something that is not rational, that has not been processed by the filtering algorithm. It is like a joker when there is no other names for it.

We have been outplayed by artificial intelligence − devices in the function of algorithm configuration and computation. However, we are living beings who have intuition that cannot be calculated; no one knows how it works. This is all from the soft sciences. What can be calculated in Joseph Brodsky’s poems or music by a genius composer? Maybe some things, but not what makes them brilliant. And how did those poems and that music get into a person’s head? The answer might be intuition or insight. But what is that?

Nonetheless, they already say that AI has invented some sort of artificial intuition. Are machines starting to beat us on our own field? Software puts humans in zugzwang, even though intuition is what we have been proud of... It is certainly about us humans.

But a machine cannot write poetry more brilliantly than Joseph Brodsky, can it?

I think it cannot. But some developers of artificial intelligence think otherwise. They will say: wait and see, a neural network will analyse the world’s best poetry, it will be thinking and thinking and thinking, and eventually it will write a very good poem. It may not be brilliant, but it may well be one of the standard poems written by geniuses.

All these questions revolve around things that have no precise definitions...

Why do we live?

But those things without precise definitions are probably the most intriguing, because the main questions of all times remain: what is the essence of life and why do we live? Neither in computation, nor for computation, I’d like to believe...

Well, why? Now I’ll ask you.

There are numerous answer options. For example, out of a sense of duty and love — for the family and loved ones, for those whom we love and those who love us. Religious answers include: in Christianity — for the salvation of the soul, to find eternal life; and in Buddhism — for the enlightenment of all living beings, to overcome suffering and find happiness...

I am not strong in Buddhism. But I can put it this way: we are born to get to know ourselves and cultivate our inner world: to nourish it, enrich it, refine it, and reap a harvest of the best deeds. Every person is a whole world, each one is priceless. We are creatures who create worlds.

I also like thinking that all living beings are one as manifestations of the original Absolute, cognising itself through human beings as well. In exploring this unity in service to God and others, we are overcoming the finite nature of human life, not only through procreation, but also in creativity, science, friendship and other important aspects of life. What do you say about that?

Let’s say that it is one of the answers I would accept.

What answers does science accept or give? What is it trying to prove these days? Does it even address these issues?

It depends on which sciences we are talking about. There are soft sciences, like philology or Buddhology in particular — they rely on texts. The natural sciences, on the other hand, deal with other things. They need a completely different type of evidence. So, in answer to the question of whether modern science deals with the issues that you have voiced, let us clarify which sciences. Philosophy does. It is a science, and it deals with the meaning of life.

I wish that living and feeling beings would not suffer not only from physical pain, but also from emotional pain...

Of course. I have worked in a psychiatric hospital and I have seen a lot. I was amazed that almost every new patient who came in would say the same thing: My soul is in pain; it is unbearable; I cannot bear it; do anything... anything to make it stop. Arms and legs are all right, neither heart, nor head is hurting. It is the soul that is in pain; and living with this pain is unbearable...

So, when a person says: "my soul is in pain", what is examined: the nervous system; the structure of the psyche, or the emotional sphere?

All of these are examined.

‘In the beginning was the Word’ or evolution

The theory of evolution − do you accept it?

This is not as innocent a question as it may sound. There are more than one theory of evolution, not just Darwinian. Questions concerning evolution have been addressed by theoretical biologists and many others. By the way, for twenty-odd years, I worked at the Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

This is not a question to ask in a fireside chat: whether I believe in evolution or that God created everything and everyone in seven days. How long is a day in God’s time? This is a serious scientific conversation. When it comes to evolution, a biochemist and a geneticist have to step into the spotlight. There were such-and-such amino acids, and there were no such-and-such. What then became of those amino acids? It is not about how fish suddenly sprouted legs and began walking around the planet, or how a fish became a bird.

What can be highlighted among the 21st century discoveries in genetics?

There is a family living in Britain — coded as the KE family — that has had speech and language quirks in several generations. Some family members could not speak properly; some stuttered; and some were dyslexic. Some clever people came up with the idea to look into the family genome and found a rare mutation in a gene called FOXP2.

Then, it was announced that the ‘language gene’ had been identified. Some even wrote more specifically that the "grammar gene" had been found. It would have been a ground-breaking discovery if indeed they had found what they are always looking for, namely the unique human gene that only humans as a biological species have and that distinguishes us from all other species. This is because Homo Sapiens is, indeed, the speaking animal — Homo Loquens. And they found such a gene. So, here you have it! Everyone was thrilled, there was a big hullabaloo. Only the celebrations soon came to an end: this gene was found in mice, chinchillas and crocodiles, which somehow are not good at grammar.

Later, it turned out that there are two versions of the FOXP2 gene: the animal version and the human version. And they differ by two amino acids. It was a very beautiful discovery, indeed.

How can there be one "language gene" when there is a great many languages? How can it determine the correct or "broken" speech and grammar patterns? Does the FOXP2 gene actually have anything to do with speech, apart from the case of the KE family?

This gene is linked to the development of speech. But in what ways? It certainly does not inflect or conjugate anything, because it is a gene and it does not need to do that. But it enables proper dendrite and axonal growth in regions involved in speech. The researchers did find other families where the data obtained from the KE family was confirmed.

The researchers did what they are supposed to do. Only the initial conclusion was wrong. FOXP2 is not a "grammar gene". It is a kind of hub where many things converge, and it regulates some key brain functions.

A very neat job was done. This gene was inserted into rodents. Surely, they did not become Joseph Brodsky, but they became extremely chatty in their "language"; they had more intense vocalisation and a wider acoustic range. This proves that the FOXP2 gene is not about the liver or the heel, but about vocalisation. This is solid evidence.

In other words, scholars are still searching for evidence to prove that speech distinguishes humans from other animals, or that, as the Bible says, ‘in the beginning was the Word’? Can the Word programme consciousness?

We know that language distinguishes us from all other species, but it cannot be proven easily. Human speech is not so much a communication tool as it is a cognitive tool. And there is musical cognition and mathematical cognition... It was written language that opened up doors for our civilisation. It is an external memory aid, beyond the limitations of the biological substrate of the brain that dies with every individual. How did it come about? Cockroaches and ants have lived on Earth for hundreds of millions of years, and somehow none of them became humans, nor acquired speech. Humans, if we count from the Cro-Magnons, are only 50,000 years old. So, how did this happen and where did language come from?

Noam Chomsky gives one of the best answers (Noam Chomsky, who was born in Philadelphia in 1928, is a famous American linguist, philosopher and public intellectual — Editor’s note). Of course, he has been criticised. Chomsky argues that there was a genetic macromutation that led to the appearance of regions in the brain that deal with language, such as Broca’s area. He believes that it was a genetic "hit".

And Chomsky is not the only one thinking this way. For example, there is a British psychiatrist Tim Crow. (Timothy Crow is known for his hypothesis that schizophrenia is the price that Homo Sapiens has to pay for developing language and, along with language, it is a disorder unique for humans as a species — Editor’s note). I talked to him — he also thinks that some time ago, there was a genetic malfunction, which turned the matter in such a way that language-related genetics became very complicated. And it is universally human genetics. The whole human race speaks — all human beings, except for cases of speech and language pathologies. There is no human being on the planet that does not have language. Language is therefore a specific trait of human beings. Human beings are those who speak.

An independent player feeding neural networks

This brings us back to artificial intelligence. It appears that if neural networks, chatbots like ChatGPT version such-and-such, are based on the accumulation of language data. They strike at the very heart of humanity.

Unfortunately, yes. Neural networks are fed with language.

If Alexander Kaplan (Head of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Neuro-Computer Interfaces at Lomonosov Moscow State University — Editor’s note) were sitting here, he would say that language has become so powerful that it has already begun to haul evolution itself. And I agree with this idea, by the way.

Has language become superior to man?

It appears to have become an independent player.

Some say that neural networks are capable of causing harm to humans, almost to the point of inciting suicide. Especially vulnerable are immature children and teenagers. Shouldn’t we restrict the development and spread of neural networks, at least until scholars have determined the risks to humanity and have created a reliable "antidote"?

If we can restrict them. It is for good reason that Elon Musk has spoken up on this issue, and a huge number of experts, over a thousand, have supported his letter. Musk is essentially saying: let’s take a pause and think about what we are going to do about it; for artificial intelligence is developing at such a speed that we are beginning to lose control over it.

Other people reply to this: no, we will not sign this letter, because we should not take a pause — we must ban AI altogether.

The problem may also be that there is big money involved.

Indeed, there are even opinions that it may be Musk who is just trying to beat out the competition.

What is scary about this process? Do you acknowledge the dangers posed by the AI and GPT development?

It is the speed that scares me. It was launched less than a year ago. Usually this kind of development process takes dozens, hundreds, thousands of years. In this case, it is days. ChatGPT was just launched, and in a couple of weeks, it was already capable of doing this and this and this...

There is a danger that we will lose control over it. I acknowledge that. And I am willing to ring all the warning bells available about this issue.

‘Humanity is not hopeless’

Going back to the dialogue with the Dalai Lama, what impression did he make on you personally?

The impression the Dalai Lama made on me when I first met him was so strong that I began to doubt whether he is just a human being (not a being from the Upper World. For Buddhists, the Dalai Lama is the earthly incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteśvara — Editor’s note). He is one incredible person. And it is incomprehensible how he came about. This is because he is both a sage and a child. Look at how sincerely he is laughing, nearly splitting his sides; how he makes jokes; all this leg-pulling: patting someone on the belly, someone on the cheek, or grabbing someone’s arm. Only children can be laughing and kidding around like that. At the same time, he is a wise man. And of course, he radiates light. When you are around him, you can see and feel this.

How can Buddhist philosophy help modern science in asking questions and seeking answers?

This is a challenge we have been trying to solve for several years now. It is very difficult, indeed, to reconcile science, which only deals with things that can be weighed and measured, even if it measures quarks. It is like wrapping a tape measure around the waist, with what Buddhist thinkers and meditation practitioners have been doing for millennia. They never take primitive measurements "with a tape measure", but they have done two and a half thousand years of intense thinking and work with consciousness. They have come up with ideas that we have not yet thought of.

Buddhist scholars study for 20 years or more. And when we come to them and say: let us browse in here and see what suits us, it does not work that way. Hence, we need such conferences, meetings with the participation of our researchers and Buddhist scholars, so that both sides make efforts to understand each other as accurately as possible. We should not view them as backward.

But there are supporters of this view among researchers...

They are wrong. Look at Bosch’s "Ship of fools". In the paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel, there are plenty of such supporters. Thinking is more powerful than weighing scales.

Meetings with Buddhist monastic scholars require a great deal of intellectual efforts. The monks asked us very professional questions. They have very solid education. They also study science. Have we read their many scrolls? Also, they have a different type of thinking. We need intermediaries from their environment to understand them.

What is the most important conclusion that you have drawn from your interaction with the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist scholars that you are ready to voice?

Humanity is not hopeless. We can, if we try hard enough, follow the path that perhaps was meant for us to follow — meant by nature or by the Creator, I do not know. This is not about inventing new toys though — we had such-and-such coffee maker, and now we will have a new one. We have to deal with consciousness. We have to address the question of what cognition is. Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table works by itself. Atoms know how to spin. Why does the universe need thinking beings?