reading 0915

Filling the mind – brain gap: A life adventure

professor francisco was an eminent neuroscientist .He was strongly influenced by Buddhism and actively participated in unraveling the relationship between science and spirituality.

“Transformations of Mind, Brain,and Emotion: Neurobiological and Bio-Behavioral Research on Meditation.”Francisco was to present his studies and findings using EEG and MEG methods at the morning session of May 22, but sadly he was unable to be there because of his illness.

Francisco and his two older brothers grew up in a prosperous intellectual and art-sensitive environment.

first of his numerous books,Los Ojos de los Insectos, (The InsectEyes), published in Madrid in 1974. This book offers a well-informed and clear description of the anatomical, physiological and optical features of insect visual systems, and includes many original ideas about information processing in visual system.

E. Rosch (2003), a close partner of Varela in his Buddhist experiences and co-author of one of his books (The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience,1991), offers a revealing personal narrative of various moments they shared over the course of many years, in which the connection between the objectivity of science and the spirituality of Buddhism and was a central issue. So deep was Varela’ s involvement in Buddhism that in the 1990’s the Dalai Lama asked him to put together a group of scientists from diverse disciplines which, under the name of the Mind and Life Institute, met several times to discuss the link between Buddhism and Science with the Buddhist leader. Varela edited these discussions and published them in the form of two books,Gentle Bridges:Dialogs between the Cognitive Sciences and the Buddhist Tradition(Hayward and Varela, 1992), andSleeping, Dreaming and Dying: Dialogs between the Cognitive Sciences and the Buddhist Tradition(Varela, 1997).

The Tree of Knowledge (1985), also translated into multiple languages. This book provided a novel look at the biological roots of human understanding.

Just six months before his death he gave the Millennium Conference 2000, sponsored by the Millennium Institute CBB, which was his last public presentation in Chile. In his conference, “Brain and Consciousness,” he enthralled the enthusiastic standing-room- only audience with his most recent adventures in the field of the human mind. He also took the time to visit the Center for Neuroscience in Valparaíso, with which he had close contact, and to release his last book, “El Fenómeno de la Vida” (The Phenomenon of Life) (2002).