It had been a while since the Great God Amazon blessed me with another book about how our usual conception of the self is an illusion. But after prayerfully searching for "neuroscience" titles, my faith was rewarded with No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology is Catching Up to Buddhism, by Chris Niebauer.
This won't be my favorite book is this genre, but I'm enjoying the first part of it.
I did peek ahead to a later chapter on consciousness and was disappointed to see positive mentions of Rupert Sheldrake. That's an annoyance. However, what I've read so far seems neuroscientifically correct. Niebauer has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuropsychology so that's to be expected. I'll give him a pass on the Sheldrake mentions if that's the only woo-woo stuff in his book.
On the plus side, after I read his chapter on "Language and Categories" this morning I had a strangely satisfying insight that left me feeling lighter and more relaxed. I say strangely because Niebauer didn't say anything that I didn't already know. He just said it in a way that made me feel a bit differently about my own beliefs and conceptions.
The lead-up to that chapter was "Meet the Interpreter." Here Niebauer described the experiments with split-brain patients whose connection between the left and right parts of the brain was severed, often in an attempt to prevent serious epileptic seizures. These experiments demonstrated that the left part of the brain is where language happens, providing interpretations of sensory information known to the right part.
For example, a split-brain patient had a picture of a chicken's foot presented to the left brain only, and a picture of a snow scene was shown to the right brain only. Then the patient was shown several pictures to both sides of the brain at the same time and asked to pick which was the most related to the original image they were shown.
The right brain pointed to a picture of a snow shovel while the left brain pointed to a picture of a chicken. Then the experimenter asked "Why is your left hand pointing to a snow shovel?" (The input and output from each side of the body is processed by the opposite side of the brain; so the right brain used the left hand to point to the snow shovel.) Niebauer writes:
Keep in mind, when the experimenter was talking to the split-brain patient, he was talking only to the patient's left brain, since the left brain controls speech. The left brain should have said, "I haven't talked to the right brain in a long time, I don't know why it does what it does with that left hand," but it didn't.
Without hesitation, the left brain said, "Oh, that's simple: the chicken foot goes with the chicken and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken coop." The patient stated this with absolute confidence. Here is what's most important about this: the talking left side of the brain easily came up with a plausible and coherent, but completely incorrect explanation based on the evidence it had available.
That's interesting, but few of us are split-brain patients. So what meaning does that have for me? Niebauer explains.
Now I would invite you to think about the interpretive mechanism of your own mind in light of what I've just told you about these experiments. For instance, if something noticeable happens, say a person cuts you off in traffic, someone gets up and suddenly runs out of a room, or an attractive person looks at you a second longer than normal, you hear a voice in your head that creates an explanation of the event: "He is a jerk," "They must have forgotten something," or "He or she is interested in me."
Notice that those are all interpretations; they may be true or they may not be. However, because many people are not conscious of the left-brain interpreter, they can't even consider that their thoughts are interpretations, but rather feel secure they are seeing things "as they really are."
This passage moves the interpreter from the outside to the inside of us.
Because the left brain looks outward and only focuses on objects, categorizes them, and labels them, is it possible that it also looks inward and does the same thing? In other words, does the left brain see thought happening in the brain and continuously create a "thing" out of the process of thinking, which it then labels "me"?
Is the sense of self related to seeing patterns in randomness? Is it possible that the self we invest so much in is nothing more than a story to help explain our behaviors, the myriad events that go on in our lives, and our experiences in the world?
Have you ever looked up at the stars in the night sky or the clouds during the day and been convinced some pattern was out there? Is it possible that you might be making that same mistake every day when you look within and find an ego or self?
In his next chapter, Niebauer talks about categories.
Another characteristic of the left brain is its constant propensity to create categories. In fact, almost everything the left brain does, from language to its perception of objects in space, is categorial in nature.
What do we mean by category? Categories are just another type of map of reality. They are mental representations that don't exist "out there" in the world, but rather they are only in the human mind -- the left side of the brain to be specific.
Categories are based on the left brain's ability to see differences and create opposites and are formed when things in the world that are continuous are grouped by some common features and then treated as one unit.
This has many benefits for us humans. But it also can lead us to wrongly believe that we know more about the world than we really do. This passage resonated with me. It left me with the aforementioned "lightness of being," because it reminded me that my beliefs, and everyone's beliefs, shouldn't be taken as seriously as most of us do.
Simply becoming aware of the interpreter and the endless categories it creates through judgment frees you from being tied to the inevitability of these judgments. That is to say, when you become conscious of the interpreter, you are free to choose to no longer take its interpretations so seriously.
In other words, when you realize that everyone's brain is constantly interpreting, in ways that are subjective and often inaccurate or completely incorrect, you might find yourself able to grasp this as "just my opinion" or "the way I see it" rather than "this is the way it is."
You being to see your judgments as simply a different line in the sand than others. When someone approaches you with a "this is the way it is" attitude, you can appreciate that this person is dominated by the left brain, that they are a servant to its master.
As a result, there is no need to take their actions or attitudes personally; it's a biological function that they have not yet recognized. This small perspective shift is enough to change how we live with each other and ourselves.
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