Q. Is persistent nondual awakening, where you have no self-referential thoughts, a step backward or a step forward? If we somehow evolved an "ego" and self-referential thoughts, there must have been some evolutionary advantage to it. Aren't you just going backwards and trying to undo evolution?
G. This is one of the most frequent questions. Fortunately, the Universe arranged some useful discussions. i was invited last year, and this year, to Brant Rock, Massachusetts to meet w/an evolutionary anthropologist, Kristen Hawkes, by another anthropologist, Stephen Beckerman, who i have worked with for several years.
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| Kristen Hawkes University of Utah |
As it turns out, Kristen Hawkes at the University of Utah, isn't just any evolutionary anthropologist, but one of the true "Yodas". Kristen is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has served on the advisory panel for cultural anthropology for the National Science Foundation. Kristen has studied, written and spoken extensively on the evolution of higher primates and their foraging, hunting and farming behaviors and strategies, the importance of "grandmothering", female infanticide, time allocation, and food sharing. She has focused particularly on the Hadza people of north-central Tanzania, the !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert of Namibia and Botswana (yes, "!Kung") and the Ache people of eastern Paraguay. The !Kung are famous for their "click" consonants language.
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| Stephen Beckerman Penn State |
Stephen Beckerman, a Fulbright-winning, cultural anthropologist at Penn State, studied extensively the behaviors of the peoples of lowland South America, particularly those isolated from contemporary society. He has focused on their forest subsistence practices, warfare on and among different tribal peoples, and their human reproductive strategies. He has worked and lived with, written and spoken on the Bari people of the Columbia-Venezuela basin and the famous warlike Waorani people of the Nap Basin in Ecuador. He has spent about 6 years living in the jungle with tribal peoples; he is also a good friend.
Evolutionary anthropology, concerned with biological and cultural evolution of humans, brings together archaeology, behavioral ecology, psychology, primatology and genetics. It is a useful discipline to look at why we evolved language and then used it to create "self-talk"/self-referential narrative. It is also useful to understand if reducing, or losing, this "self-narrative" is likely to decrease, or increase, our chances for survival as a species going forward.
As discussed in earlier blogs, "What Is the Default Mode Network? Folk on Tolle board mentioned you", "Meditation Can Permanently Eliminate I-focused Narrative" and "Folk Who Meditate Decrease Mind Wandering", there is a "selfing/I-ing" network which manifests when the brain is not actively doing specific tasks. This is called the Default Mode Network (DMN) and it is where the self-referential narrative arises.
If the key brain regions of this network, the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), are active, our all-too-common internal "blah, blah" manifests. It these regions are relatively deactivated, either through doing a task (including meditating), or have become persistently deactivated through lengthy meditation, there are no/few self-referential narratives, fears, or desires.
If the key brain regions of this network, the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), are active, our all-too-common internal "blah, blah" manifests. It these regions are relatively deactivated, either through doing a task (including meditating), or have become persistently deactivated through lengthy meditation, there are no/few self-referential narratives, fears, or desires.
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| Core centers in Default Mode Network |
Kristen, Steve and i have been discussing this for some time, delving into the brain structure and operation of chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives. A collaborator of Kristen's, James Rilling, and his collaborators at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, have published the key paper on the subject "A Comparison of Resting-State Brain Activity in Humans and Chimpanzees", in the top-tier Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Oct. 23, 2007 (104), 43, 17146-17151.
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| Chimpanzee |
Not surprisingly, it is impossible to get fMRI pictures of chimpanzee's brains, as they will not lie still in the hollow tube of an fMRI with its continuous banging for long periods, so the only studies that could be done on chimpanzees' brain state were inferences we could draw based on their behavior.
In contrast to most other primates, chimpanzees are capable of recognizing themselves in mirrors, which suggests that they may have the prerequisite self-concept that introspection, or selfing, would require. There is much debate, still unresolved, as to whether chimps can make intellectual assessments about the mental states of others, i.e. theory of mind. Surprisingly, as Kristen Hawke points out, there is no indication that chimpanzees have a "language" or that they truly "speak" to each other as we do. The question arises then, if they don't speak "out loud", what would their default mode network "do" instead of internal "self-talk" when it isn't tasking?
What Rilling, et al. did was to employ an ingenious approach with positron emission tomography (PET) using an IV-injected radioactively-labelled glucose for both humans and chimpanzees. After entering the bloodstream, the glucose accumulates in neurons corresponding to the rate at which glucose is metabolized - more activity, more accumulated glucose, stronger signals. During this period of 45 mins in humans and 75 mins in chimpanzees, they rested quietly in a private room or in their home cages, respectively. The subjects were then PET scanned, the humans awake and the chimpanzees sedated to capture the brain metabolism that had occurred during the awake period.
In contrast to most other primates, chimpanzees are capable of recognizing themselves in mirrors, which suggests that they may have the prerequisite self-concept that introspection, or selfing, would require. There is much debate, still unresolved, as to whether chimps can make intellectual assessments about the mental states of others, i.e. theory of mind. Surprisingly, as Kristen Hawke points out, there is no indication that chimpanzees have a "language" or that they truly "speak" to each other as we do. The question arises then, if they don't speak "out loud", what would their default mode network "do" instead of internal "self-talk" when it isn't tasking?
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| Jim Rilling Emory University |
What Rilling, et al. did was to employ an ingenious approach with positron emission tomography (PET) using an IV-injected radioactively-labelled glucose for both humans and chimpanzees. After entering the bloodstream, the glucose accumulates in neurons corresponding to the rate at which glucose is metabolized - more activity, more accumulated glucose, stronger signals. During this period of 45 mins in humans and 75 mins in chimpanzees, they rested quietly in a private room or in their home cages, respectively. The subjects were then PET scanned, the humans awake and the chimpanzees sedated to capture the brain metabolism that had occurred during the awake period.
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| Human default mode network |
As is shown in the cross-section at the left (a), the traditional PCC and MPFC in the DMN are active in humans during "non-tasking". There is also exterior activity on the left side in (b) linked to semantic knowledge retrieval, directed manipulation of knowledge for problem-solving and planning, spontaneous thoughts, and mind wandering including Broca's (speech production) and Wernicke's (understanding speech) areas.
As shown at the right, chimpanzees similarly exhibited high levels of activity in the PCC and MPFC. However, in the MPFC, the humans showed the highest level in the upper areas whereas the chimps showed more widespread activity with concentration in the lower areas. Also, the left side activity related to language and conceptual processing involving semantic knowledge retrieval was absent in chimpanzees.
The upper MPFC is associated with thinking about another's thoughts as well as knowledge of the other, while the lower MPFC is involved with monitoring self and other's emotion and emotional processing in general. Therefore, it is likely that the chimps' DMN operation is composed of emotionally-laden episodic memory retrieval and some level of mental self-projection, but without language or conceptual processing. As the chimps do not activate the "speech" centers, their internal "self-talk" is not verbal as it is in humans, but more likely just emotions or images.
While folk with persistent non-symbolic, non-dual (PNS) consciousness report that they have significantly reduced verbal self-talk and reduced emotionally-laden episodic memory retrieval, they would be similar to chimpanzees in those regards. However, unlike our ancestors, PNS folk retain their abilities to speak externally w/continued fluency and to perform semantic knowledge retrieval and directed manipulation of that knowledge for problem-solving and planning, likely enhanced by the absence of interfering "self-talk".
Given the existence of these capabilities as different functional areas in the higher primates, it is not surprising that the PNS folk are able to selectively refunctionalize around internal self talk and emotionally-laden memory retrieval. As these are arguably the primary causes of our stress, cravings, desires, unhappiness, psychosomatic illnesses and depression, this is a desirable outcome, arguably even an evolutionarily-positive one. This would also explain why "self talk" can be dramatically reduced while still retaining semantic memory retrieval, problem solving and planning - they are discrete brain regions and networks.
So is this a good tradeoff, evolutionarily? Which population is more likely to survive, those that have retained self-referential narrative and episodic emotionally-laden memory retrieval, or those that don't?
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| Chimpanzee default mode network |
As shown at the right, chimpanzees similarly exhibited high levels of activity in the PCC and MPFC. However, in the MPFC, the humans showed the highest level in the upper areas whereas the chimps showed more widespread activity with concentration in the lower areas. Also, the left side activity related to language and conceptual processing involving semantic knowledge retrieval was absent in chimpanzees.
The upper MPFC is associated with thinking about another's thoughts as well as knowledge of the other, while the lower MPFC is involved with monitoring self and other's emotion and emotional processing in general. Therefore, it is likely that the chimps' DMN operation is composed of emotionally-laden episodic memory retrieval and some level of mental self-projection, but without language or conceptual processing. As the chimps do not activate the "speech" centers, their internal "self-talk" is not verbal as it is in humans, but more likely just emotions or images.
While folk with persistent non-symbolic, non-dual (PNS) consciousness report that they have significantly reduced verbal self-talk and reduced emotionally-laden episodic memory retrieval, they would be similar to chimpanzees in those regards. However, unlike our ancestors, PNS folk retain their abilities to speak externally w/continued fluency and to perform semantic knowledge retrieval and directed manipulation of that knowledge for problem-solving and planning, likely enhanced by the absence of interfering "self-talk".
Given the existence of these capabilities as different functional areas in the higher primates, it is not surprising that the PNS folk are able to selectively refunctionalize around internal self talk and emotionally-laden memory retrieval. As these are arguably the primary causes of our stress, cravings, desires, unhappiness, psychosomatic illnesses and depression, this is a desirable outcome, arguably even an evolutionarily-positive one. This would also explain why "self talk" can be dramatically reduced while still retaining semantic memory retrieval, problem solving and planning - they are discrete brain regions and networks.
So is this a good tradeoff, evolutionarily? Which population is more likely to survive, those that have retained self-referential narrative and episodic emotionally-laden memory retrieval, or those that don't?
It's an interesting question, and I'll simply comment from some personal experience.
ReplyDeleteAn academic chap I know recently expressed this same idea, that non-dual consciousness was regression - just before he exploded when I put forward some other possibilities. This reaction surprised me, as I am a pretty non-threatening person, I like to think. One thing my spiritual teachers from some time ago taught me how to do was to connect and read consciousness fields, and I suppose this might be termed a 'telepathic' process, since it doesn't require any immediate sensory data. My perception with my angry academic friend, and the idea of non-dual and non-ordinary states being regressive, is that the ego/mind resists them greatly, and interprets them as 'death'. The fear may than translate into anger and some kind of verbal attack - there can be negative projections of 'energy' (don't know what else to call it as there is no science on it) involved as well.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who meditates and has spent time in what are deemed non-ordinary states of consciousness (if they are indeed 'states' at all) who has had many experiences of awareness, understandings, and perception that are immediate and non-linguistic, and even non-visual in nature. Language/image simply isn't required for many kinds of perception - or even the 'transfer' of information - from one mind or consciousness field to another. Often there is a mixture of modalities. There might be a simple image that comes into the mind, a couple of words, and an immediate ‘knowing’ of something that requires no words or analysis. With the latter it’s as if the information is simply downloaded into the brain/mind and bypasses verbal-linguistic requirements.
I agree with mystic Leonard Jacobson that the entire current exploration of life and nature by human beings (science) is predominantly a projection of (what I call) 'the alienated mind' - and its agenda for control and power, which in turn emerge from the terror of death.
There may well come a time (probably far off) when language is either unnecessary, or plays a secondary role to direct, non-dual perceptions for our species. I pretty much live that way already, although I suspect I am merely flirting with the potentials of mind, rather than being fully in mastery of them. And I have met many people who are perfectly capable of living this way. It's a pity science is so far behind human potential, but when you apply the scientific method in conservative scientific organisations and their rigid cultures, progress is going to be slow. Then add to this the extreme addiction to thinking and abstract reasoning that science and academia instils in smart people today, and it makes it even harder. But the shift will be fully embodied - one day. It’s already begun.