This is an interesting video brought to my attention by What is Enlightenment Magazine. I have experienced this bliss momentarily before myself. The most vivid experience I had of it did not come from a formal meditation but from a process called "image streaming" where you verbally describe your mental imagery. It is a good mental workout that is supposed to synchronize the brain's hemispheres.
We are constantly worrying even when we don't know what we are worrying about. This is an important apparatus for our survival as it keeps us wary and it drives us towards innovation and preparation for perceived or imagined threats. But this process exist even when we feel like we are not worrying there is a continuous loop of time mapping/identity formulating/ future speculation/danger monitering of the environment that goes on behind the scenes and keeps us in a tense state. When the input is overridden it is shockingly freeing (as was the case with the woman's stroke).
We are constantly seeking this experience in various forms of entertainment, fantasy, drugs, etc... We know we can over-ride that neural circuit, but for most of us it only happens in degrees and only rarely. Some people can train themselves to do it at will, but it is so far not possible to know whether this is a genetic trait that only some are capable of or all of us can do. I strongly believe only a few are capable of it, in the same way that only 1 in 50 million people (a guess) can throw a 98mph fastball for a strike. You are either born with the potential or not.
I believe that this state of peace is one of the primary rewards in the reward/punishment system that nature uses to funnel humans down to specific behaviors. When everything is right with the world (we have our sex, status, and protection of our offspring) we are at ease. And being at ease makes us appear even more attractive because others see us as successful. When we don't have these things, we live in a more tense state which is our body's way of telling us "you will not get the reward of freedom and peace until you figure out a way to aquire sex, status and protection of your offspring".
Drugs, fantasy, meditation, spirituality are ways to tap the reward without aquiring the darwinian currency. We were designed by nature to be obsessive worriers. Our ancestors who were not, did not survive long enough to breed as much as those who were. (Hitchens comes to mind here-"created sick by Gawd and commanded to be well"- an indictment not only of the Abrahamic religions but also of Buddhism which exists under the same complete lack of acknowledgement of human evolution).
Even the Dalai Lama has speculated about a future technology that could induce this state. Even just a taste of it made available for everyone on a regular basis could change the world more than a trillion prayers, sermons or holy books. Just a specific electrical current in the brain (imagining this were safely possible with some device) could truly be the next big advancement in human technology (a new paradigm larger than the computer, the atom bomb, or the microscope).
I suspect that such a device would be unfathomably difficult to construct due to the variation in human neuroanatomy, but it is without doubt theoretically possible.
7 comments:
A fascinating video.
I'm not sure a agree with your terminology - the idea that we are always "worrying". I would be more inclined to call it something more neutral, like "monitoring".
//When everything is right with the world (we have our sex, status, and protection of our offspring) we are at ease. And being at ease makes us appear even more attractive because others see us as successful.//
Your assertion might overstate the case. I'm not convinced there is any real correspondence between "being at ease" and appearing "more attractive". I don't know how such a study would be accomplished, but attractiveness is not just in the beheld, but in the eye of the beholder. That is to say, what attracts one person to another may have nothing to do with the objects state of "ease". In fact, I could imagine situations where *not* being at ease might be the more attractive. What woman, for example, would want to risk her off-spring on a mate who she *interprets* as being detached or lacking ego. It depends on the environment.
//We were designed by nature to be obsessive worriers. Our ancestors who were not, did not survive long enough to breed as much as those who were.//
Exactly. Given this understanding, someone who was a successful worrier, using your terminology, would be more attractive than someone "at ease". According to your thesis, any mate would know that worriers survive longer.
Anyway, I have more thoughts on this, but I have to go to a Birthday Party.
Sounds like the kind of NDE a neuro-anatomist would have. :-)
Well, I did call it monitering-
"mapping/identity formulating/ future speculation/danger monitering of the environment"
"worrying" is how I described the experience after it happened. Actually I described it to myself as "a place which has no concept of the existence of worrying". I strongly suspect that this is identical in nature to other mystical experiences.
By being at ease I was thinking of "cool" in the stylish sense. Also, the best way to display and observe social dominance is to provide and care for others out of abundance. When people see someone who has excess and is free spirited and unabsorbed it is highly attractive.
"According to your thesis, any mate would know that worriers survive longer."
Worriers that bring home food survive longer. Worriers that don't gain no favor by worrying.
Another thought- the development of the human imagination and foresight (mediated by the brain's frontal lobe along with our higher altruistic traits) has made worrying and obsessing even easier to do. It's good to be able to calculate consequences, but it creates anxiety.
//Well, I did call it monitering-//
Yes, you did. My bad.
The lecturer was really saying exactly the same thing as many NDErs, but without the overlay of LAD or mystical/spiritual imagery.
She seems to say: 'If everyone could just experience the bliss that I experienced, imagine how the world would change!'
I wonder if that's enough for people? I mean, she might as well be describing a really good trip or a mind-blowing high. Gee, if only everybody could snort Ketamine, just imagine how the world would change!
Her experience has no context or meaning. Give it context, and it is either a trick of the brain and therefore meaningless (which is an understanding she flirts with) or it is indicative of some sort of metaphysical truth (in the spiritual sense). People, in general, prefer to believe there's something more to themselves than their brain. In that light, she offers them nothing but a feel-good trip.
I suppose that's the kind of lecture one would expect from a self-respecting scientist.
There is one moment, though, Aaron, when I get the *strong* impression that she isn't telling us everything - as though she were stopping herself. I think I recognized the moment because I've done it myself. It was just when she was describing the feeling of giving up and going into the fetal position. Her whole body language changes for a moment, as though she were going to say: "And then I left my body!" or some such thing. Watch it and you'll see what I mean. I have the strong suspicion that she experienced more of the classic NDE than she(perhaps wisely) admits to.
"Her experience has no context or meaning. Give it context, and it is either a trick of the brain and therefore meaningless (which is an understanding she flirts with) or it is indicative of some sort of metaphysical truth (in the spiritual sense)."
Both in my opinion. The metaphysical truth is that the sense of self is generated by the brain and can be shut down when the brain stops generating it (for instance, due to a hemorrhage). When it does, a mind continues existing (this is not an admission that I believe in LAD!) but doesn't notice where it begins and everything else ends.
She sounded completely sold on LAD and new age spiritualism to me. Maybe I read her wrong. She may have had more of an NDE like experience but I think she would have talked about it if she did. As a neuroscientist, I think she would have been totally enthralled to have had the opportunity to experience and talk about that if it had happened.
I think the experience would change people drastically if it were made widely available, exactly the same way having an NDE changes people. Most people would interpret it instantly as a spiritual experience and be convinced that it proves their interconnectedness with the universe and immortality. This may lead to the construction of more cults and religions.
//She sounded completely sold on LAD and new age spiritualism to me.//
I didn't get that impression at all. If memory serves, she never once said anything about LAD or even that she experienced any kind of consciousness beyond the medically explicable.
Everything made perfect physiological sense, including the feeling of oneness, which she ascribed to the right hemisphere - not to God. It was a trick of the brain - a powerful one but a trick of the brain.
Again, the entirety of her monologue essentially boiled down to the wish that *everyone* could experience the same neurological high.
It's hard to say what exactly she believes based on this and I can't find anything with a search that gives the answer. Her use of the word "energy" and interconnectedness seemed like a giveaway for me that she at least sympathizes with new agers. She must be at least agnostic. And as a neuroanatomist at a prestigious university it wouldn't be kosher to claim her belief in survival even if she believes it simply because she knows that her experience alone doesn't constitute any empirical evidence. The video has become very popular in spiritual circles and if she had an aversion to spiritualists she isn't taking any steps to burst their bubble. Just my 2 cents.
Aaron,
Congratulations on finally writing a blog post that isn't awful. I was losing my faith in your ability to write anything interesting, in light of the disastrously boring posts you've made over the past several weeks, if not months.
While not as good as Pat's extremely well-written post about banning pornography in and expelling atheists from the U.S. military, your post was at least mildly entertaining. I congratulate you on this unexpectedly positive turn of events.
Steve
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