13

A Way Out of the Grand Delusion

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955)¹

•Why does everyone suffer from the same refractory “optical delusion” that Einstein once captured in this memorable phase? Why can’t we see beyond our separate Self/other delusions into the unifying reality of the Big Picture?

This imbalance begins with an actual physical separation: our skin’s outer layer serves to separate Self from other. This defines the first, somatic, boundary of our I-Me-Mine operations (see chapter 3). However, our major troubles arise from much deeper levels. They are rooted in subconscious psychic longings and loathings. Limbic networks do more than attach the anxieties of our psyche to every Self-centered physical frame of reference. Limbic habit energies also keep driving us to see that other world outside only through a lens warped by our own emotional biases. [SI: 49–83; 85–121] Therefore, each time our intrusive Self-referent brain reaches out to clutch something it longs to possess in that space out there, it reinforces its own deep-seated “optical delusion.” Why? Because it has been wired and conditioned to frame each question in the same covetous egocentric terms: “Where is that object in relation to ME?”

• Did Einstein suggest a constructive solution, explain how we could liberate ourselves from this delusion?

Yes. He accomplished this in one sentence. Its formula condensed some of the elegant earthshaking simplicity of E = mc². He said we could “free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.”²

Widen our circle of compassion? Doesn’t such a widening expand our other-referential horizons? Doesn’t this really mean a wide-open embrace of the fellow creatures that share this other world, this vast global space beyond our own elbows? If so, then one way to start is by cultivating the practices that help us let go of Self-centered preoccupations.

• How can we learn to appreciate the beauty in Nature?

By returning often to reclaim our birthright, the innate beauty of our ancestral home, the world outdoors. Chapter 4 and appendix A suggest ways to do just this.

More about the Implications of the Allo-pathways for Wordless Intuition

About the time that Einstein died in 1955, the Greek- derived word—allocentric—was starting to seep into English discourse. We have seen that allo- is a prefix. It simply refers to “other,” just as ego is a common way to refer back to our own Self. So, allo- now usefully describes the normal functions of many other subordinate networks in our brain. What is significant is the special way these networks initially process the world outside our skin. They frame it anonymously, on its terms, “out there.” They do not insist that such a world must always pass first through the lens of our ego and then be subjected to our personal filters “back here.”

Once researchers and readers at large grasp these sharp contrasts with ego processing at an intellectual level, the distinctions can be of great conceptual benefit. However, it is difficult to hold on to every conceptual implication of allocentric processing. This is especially true if one keeps relying entirely on word-thought logic and cannot release, even for a moment, one’s fixed belief in the sovereignty of Self.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) led the West toward one way of understanding the other-referential mode. He introduced the concept of Ding an sich. This meant the thing in itself, the object as it exists “out there,” before it undergoes further processing by our senses. [ZBR: 361–371] The notion of the thing in itself, out there, helps liberate us from that old, in-turned optical delusion that had always held us in solitary confinement. We are now left freer to perceive and appreciate that other major values are inherent within the spacious Big Picture. Later we might even begin to realize how to behave in accord with “the way all other things really are.”

We can be reminded by one of Buddha’s teachings how to hold on to this comprehension: use only broad, sturdy leaves, like those of a lotus, to build your container of understanding (see chapter 4). The next time you are near a genuine lotus leaf, let your fingers feel how thick and sturdy it is. After this direct experience, you will appreciate the basis for his teaching.

• Why has the prefix allo- acquired the potential to encompass all interrelationships implicit in other things “out there”? And why could such an allo-concept provide an accurate perspective of reality that seems inherently more objective?

Keep reminding yourself: allocentric processing views scenes anonymously. The A pathway in figure 11.1 and plate 1 is both Allocentric and Anonymous. This perspective is emancipated. Such an overview begins free from every unfruitful subjectivity that would otherwise cling to your egocentric Self. One result of this jailbreak is an all-encompassing non-dual frame of reference. Perception is no longer distorted by so many Self-centered attachments. [ZBR: 333–371] The next time you are near a lotus pond, notice how high a lotus bloom can rise on its stalk out of the water. Similarly, a more liberated consciousness begins to open up from its elevated, universal perspective to consider ecological issues more intuitively. [ZB: 141–145] The more the old Self shrinks, the more comprehensive and compassionate can be this unsullied view of the Big Picture.

• Back in the gritty, mud-spattered realities of daily life, when do we access the allo-pathways along this lower watershed of temporo ↔ frontal networks?

We access them each time our brain seeks an answer to its perennial question “What is this?” (see figure 3.1). This simple technique—asking “What?”—is a time-honored tradition. It began with Ch’an wordplay in the Tang Dynasty.³ [ZBR: 201; MS: 63, 72–73] Especially will it be from contributions along the ventral visual stream of the right hemisphere that some of these innate capacities begin to express themselves. They have a global responsibility. Their job is to identify, anonymously and without recourse to words, which object is out there on both sides of the whole external environment.

It is rare that we pause to appreciate two other interpretive feats accomplished by these covert interpretive networks. First, they automatically decode what this object means. Second, their connections help infuse it with a reasonably accurate sense of reality. In this regard, Shunryu Suzuki has articulated what happens in these networks during a program of meditative training: they begin to reflect increasingly veridical truths, comprehended intuitively (see chapter 10 epigraph).

• But given our prior “optical delusion”—the nearsighted egocentric mode that dominates these subordinate allocentric pathways—how could meditative practices help restore a more appropriate balance to the ways our brain interprets the supposedly objective reality of its perceptions?

Evidence reviewed in chapter 3 emphasizes the complementary attributes of the concentrative and receptive styles of meditation. [SI: 35–39, 109–117; MS: 42–52, 53–139] Therefore, it is essential to keep cultivating both approaches when you embark on the long-term approach to training your attentiveness. During your daily life practice, their two physiologies need to co-evolve in a balanced manner that becomes increasingly selfless. This is easier to do outdoors in Nature than indoors, where myriad multitasking artificialities keep distracting one’s attentiveness. [ZB: 664–667]

• Then why do these pages emphasize chiefly the right hemisphere’s temporo-frontal intuitive functions while deemphasizing those overactive thought streams on the left side that are involved in language?

There is nothing new about this right-sided emphasis that favors intuitive functions over language. It is one way to redress a prevailing cultural imbalance. [SI: 150–152] For centuries, Zen masters in China, Korea, and Japan have objected strenuously to elaborate word-thoughts and concepts. They understood that each thought structure could exert a negative influence that interfered with the spiritual Path (see chapters 5, 6). In China, three centuries before the Common Era, the message advocated in the Tao Te Ching was already clear: “Those who know, do not speak; those who speak, do not know.” [ZB: 12]

Soto Zen master Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) continued to articulate this empirical rationale: “To open your innate nature and to feel something from the bottom of your heart, it is necessary to stay silent . . . Staying silent will open your intuition . . . The way to study Zen is not verbal.”⁴

Rinzai Zen traditions place a major emphasis on the particular refinement of intuition called insight. [SI: 123–188] At our first meeting, Kobori-Roshi (1918–1992) introduced me to the importance of prajna. [ZB: 545–549] He also taught that “in the deepest realm of Zen meditation there is no single word.” [ZBR: 389] He did so for empirical reasons: word-thoughts seem to get in the way of prajna’s flash of insight-wisdom. Ineffability placed first on William James’s short list when he enumerated the chief characteristics of a religious/mystical experience. Even more incisive is the old Japanese Buddhist phrase gongo dodan. It means “the path of words has been cut.” [ZBR: 358, 360]. No words!

By definition, insight happens instantly. It is not driven by our logic-tight sequences of deliberate, wordy thought. Does any current research into the pros and cons of language support those early warnings by Tang Dynasty Ch’an masters that word-thoughts could block the flash of insight in their trainees?

Word Problems

Bergen et al. gave a simple first task to their normal subjects: listen to words that were being spoken in the form of short recorded sentences.⁵ The whole meaning of each sentence hinged on where each event could have taken place in the extrinsic environment. The two possibilities were either higher up, or lower down. For example, in some sentences the subjects could hear an up-word (sky) being spoken. Other sentences would specify a down-word (e.g., grass).

The subjects’ next task was a simple visual discrimination: They indicated by a button press whether they saw a circle or a square. Each visual target appeared either at a higher, or lower place on the computer screen. They could see each ○ or □ clearly, during a long 200 millisecond interval. Some subjects took 30 milliseconds longer to signal this discrimination. What caused this slowing? Why had they hesitated? The delay occurred when they saw either this square, or this circle, in that very same upper, or lower location. This was the same place in space that had just been inferred by that up-or-down word-language inserted into the prior sentence.

Something was amiss. Something about the way these early spatial nouns or verbs had entered into the subjects’ neural processing was interfering with their subsequent performance, not helping it. When did these prior spatial words cause greater interference delays? When both the visual and auditory processing converged during those tasks that were chiefly referable to the upper visual fields. These greater upper-field hesitations are consistent with the possibility that word inferences were being entangled more among some (lower) networks that could have been extending their potential links among allocentric processing channels (see plate 1 and figure 11.1).

How do mere words interfere with other brain functions, directly or indirectly? Could entanglements that arise among language networks (perhaps especially in our left hemisphere) sometimes compete for neural resources with nearby intuitive processing mechanisms? Could some loose thought structures, (protothoughts, as it were), become roadblocks preventing our free access to insights that might otherwise help us express innate degrees of selfless insight-wisdom?

Researchers have different ways to demonstrate the latent power of words. For example, they can present their subjects with words that are either risky or safe. Then they can measure the way the subjects respond in either a Self-centered or an other-centered paradigm.⁶ Under these experimental conditions, it turns out that the subjects’ normal EEG and fMRI responses are less efficient (averaging 34 seconds slower in the EEG data) during a context in which egocentric entanglement could occur than they are during a context in which allocentric involvement could occur.

• What about other ways to improve brain functions, not hinder them?

Recent neuroscience research provides other intriguing links between preconscious problem solving and creative intuition. [MS: 145–155] The collective weight of such evidence leads us toward the following premise. Suppose that certain meditative practices do allow our lower temporo ↔ frontal networks to escape from the sticky cross-talk of Self-imposed, wordy distractions. After such a pregnant silence deepens, a testable working hypothesis could then ask the following question: Could other resources available along the “southern” pathways be liberated to engage in the wide-open, free-associative creative play that helps improvise our most adaptive insights? Could such an effortless flow of messages among these lower networks enable the latent musical traces in the brain of a Louis Armstrong to play themselves?

Seeking answers to such seemingly far-out questions, we will keep exploring the brain’s subconscious avenues. In part V, this journey leads us to glimpse the outlines of new research horizons.