Rebirth and the Western Buddhist - Khamkoo

52 Rebirth and the Western Buddhist
and chemical behaviour of the nervous system could
have been eliminated from biology, to the extent that a
neurobiologist can accuse those who are trying to reassert
it of mounting "an attack, not merely against neurobiology
but against the whole rational structure of science
itself"? 94
Hatred and fear of religion and mystery has played its
part, but probably more important is our habit of rendering
the world objective by stepping back into the role
of an onlooker who does not belong to it. The physicist
Schr6dinger, 95 one of the builders of Quantum Mechanics,
has explained clearly the errors that result. My
mind constructs the objective, "real world" out of my
sensations, perceptions and memories. Now this objective
world includes both my own body and those of other
people, which there is every reason to believe are linked
with consciousness just as mine is. Thus I regard other
people's minds as forming part of the real world around
me, and because of the symmetry between others and
myself I conclude that my own mind too forms part of the
real world it constructed. I feel sure my conscious personality
is inside my head, looking out from behind my eyes.
Therefore I expect to find in the real world sensations of
colours and sounds etc., and places where mind and
matter interact. But since in fact my mind was never part
of that world, and nor were others' minds, to which I
have absolutely no direct subjective access, it follows that
however hard I look I cannot find these sensations or
interactions, but only matter behaving in exact accordance
with the laws of physics and chemistry-pulses
shooting along nerve fibres, transmitter substances diffusing
across synapses to trigger other neurons and being
mopped up by enzymes, and all the other intricate processes
of the nervous system. Nowhere is there any
objective evidence of the existence of mind or its inter-