The Mind-Body Segregation

When this columnist closes his eyes to meditate, he 'feels' clearly that his mind is located in the prefrontal cortex, the mantle of nervous tissue just behind the forehead. The mind is what this cortex does and that the equivalent brain portion of non-human mammals, much smaller in size, cannot do. Everything that is mental - thoughts, feelings, desires, perceptions, memories, reasoning and consciousness of the self - is performed in or by the prefrontal cortex. Is it always so?

A number of phenomena imply that not all mental tasks totally occur in the brain. This note refers to four of such phenomena, bizarre examples of the complexity of human nature: the placebo effect, the nocebo effect, the psychological problems resulting from an overactive immune system, and the influence of the intestinal flora in mental states.

The placebo effect is the healing outcome of inert substances or sham procedures in patients with real health problems. Numerous experiments have confirmed the effectiveness of illusory drugs or fictitious treatments in the handling of many diseases; sorcerers know this quite well. Successful outcomes are not consistent. Harvard psychologist Irving Kirsch found in a meta-analysis of actual drugs versus placebos that the power of these is more positive when, as it happens in depression cases, both recoveries and declines are more in the head than in other parts of the body.

The nocebo effect, the reciprocal of the placebo effect and also real, is the harmful sequel to the health of people with negative expectations around innocuous substances or harmless circumstances. People with asthma are frequent victims of the nocebo effect. Recent research by the Monell Research Center, Philadelphia, PA, concluded that the mere possibility that a smell is harmful can increase inflammation of the airways during the following 24 hours (or even for a longer time) after the exposure. "Asthmatics are always concerned about essences and fragrances. If they believe a smell is harmful, their bodies react as if it were", says Dr. Cristina Jaén, Director of the study.

Psychological problems arising from non-existent infections have been documented by Dr. Erich Kasten, Professor of neurophysiology at the Medical School Hamburg in Germany. According to Dr. Kasten, an overactive autoimmune system may confuse the harmful consequences of stress (the mental state resulting from physical, job-related, social or financial factors that tend to alter equilibrium), with bacterial or viral infections that do require corrective actions. Cytokines are messenger molecules generated by the immune system when it detects danger of infection. Cytokine generated inflammation, an important mechanism in disease prevention, also causes tiredness and apathy similar to those present in many diseases. When the immune system overreacts to non-pathogens (such as stress) or to harmless stimuli, it generates unnecessary alarming cytokines that lead to mood downfalls followed eventually by melancholy or depression.

The fourth 'extra-cerebral' phenomenon, and probably the strangest, refers to the trillions of bacteria, foreign to the human body (they exceed in number our own cells), that make up the gut flora. Those bacteria are rotatory commensals ever present in our body. According to science writer Charles Schmidt, researchers have now "a growing conviction that that the vast assemblage of microfauna in our intestines may have a major impact on our state of mind. The gut-brain axis seems to be bidirectional: the brain acts on gastrointestinal and immune functions that help to shape the gut's microbial makeup, and gut microbes make neuroactive compounds, including neurotransmitters." Is this not amazing? It gives sense to the expression ‘gut feeling’.

Our mind is in our head (we feel it) and the head is part of our body (we know this). What is then the need of a mind-body split? Such dichotomy comes from the inevitable categorization that social and natural sciences require (good-bad, hot-cold, one-zero...), and directly descends from the spirit-matter religious distinction. Yes, there is something that is absolute in many categorizations. But the strange effects of placebos and nocebos, the melancholy associated with infections and the anxiety generated by intestinal bacteria, the mind-body segregation does not seem to be an absolute one... At least, it should not be dealt so in health diagnoses.

Gustavo Estrada
Author of ‘INNER HARMONY through MINDFULNESS MEDITATION’
www.harmonypresent.com

The Pointer of the Road

Many admirers of the Buddha, because of his understanding of human nature, have compared him to a physician who diagnoses and prescribes; a biologist, who studies, organizes and discerns genetics; an anthropologist, who anticipates the evolution of life; a psychologist, who delves into the recesses of the mind, or a psychotherapist, who brings to light emotional problems.

Although there are interpretations of the teachings of the Sage that would partially validate such similarities, there is a good dose of generous exaggeration in them. It makes more sense to raise a different issue: Are the teachings some sort of psychotherapy? A cautious answer is the affirmative. Anxiety and stress -the suffering the Buddha aims to eliminate- are dysfunctions that have existed since long before the words 'psychology' or 'psychotherapy' were coined.

The treatment the Buddha recommended for the eradication of anxiety and stress parallelizes the standard sequence in the solution of any health complication: 1) Symptoms: There is a malady that shows as anxiety and stress. (2) Diagnosis: Such evil originates in cravings and aversions. (3) Prognosis: The disease is curable. (4) Prescription: There is a procedure - a road - to eliminate the causes of the condition, which is the application of eight common sense practices, out of which mindfulness, the seventh one, is the most relevant.

Among the many streams of psychotherapy (psychoanalysis, Gestalt, hypnotherapy, group therapy ...), cognitive therapy is the closest to mindfulness. Cognitive therapy suggests that changing harmful thoughts -the cause of depression and anxiety- corrects harmful emotions and behaviors. The emphasis, however, does not focus on individual thoughts but in their patterns -the negative distortions (generalizations, disqualifications, all-or-nothing thinking...) - that are the actual cause of harmful mental states.

Mindfulness, in turn, demands the impartial and permanent monitoring of sensations and mental states, with no consideration of its nature, cause or effect. For example, the observer, without making any judgment, becomes aware of how sensations feel (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral), or whether they are subtle (almost unnoticeable) or clear. Likewise, for mental states, monitoring is exercised on the presence or absence of greed, fear or mental biases, or on whether the mind is concentrated or distracted.

Mindfulness, as a permanent  habit, and meditation, as an exercise aimed at strengthening the faculty to awareness, have such a remarkable popularity in modern life that even the severe  'Scientific American' has covered the subject from the physiological and psychological perspectives. With the American magazine’s characteristic caution, it writes in a recent issue: "Meditation has made its way into the secular world as a means of promoting calmness and overall well-being." Emphasizing the need to submit research studies to the rigors of the scientific method, the magazine acknowledges that the various practices developed by the Buda "provide new insights into methods of mind training that have the potential to enhance human health and well-being"

How do the exercise of psychotherapy and the practice of mindfulness differ? Psychotherapists themselves are an integral part of the therapy process (sometimes up to the undesirable extreme of generating patient-counselor dependency); therapists not only direct every session but they share the responsibility for results. In contrast, the outcome of mindfulness as a continued practice is the sole responsibility of the practitioner. The Buddha is categorical on this point.

On a certain occasion a disciple asked the Sage the reasons why some followers of the teachings succeeded to eliminate suffering while many others failed in their purpose. "The directions to reach the end of the path to the cessation of suffering are precise,” he replies. “Some follow them properly and complete the journey, other misinterpret them and get lost. If the map is accurate, is it the Buddha’s fault that many misread it and fail to reach the destination?" "No way", replies the disciple. "The instructions are correct and the responsibility to follow them is the traveler’s", reaffirms the Master. Then he adds to close the dialogue: "The Buddha has nothing to do if someone goes astray; the Buddha is only the pointer of the road."

Gustavo Estrada
Author of 'INNER HARMONY through MINDFULNESS MEDITATION'
www.harmonypresent.com

Atlanta, April 11, 2015

Truth is a Pathless Land

My interest in Krishnamurti began in 1986 when I learned of his death. The most quoted paragraph of this Indian philosopher was part of the news in the magazine: "Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. Truth cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path.” If, as this columnist thinks, Krishnamurti’s assertion is right, why are there so many religious dogmas and political doctrines that want to take possession over the 'truth'?
My enthusiasm for the writings of this thinker was highest. I read his biography (two volumes by British writer Mary Lutyens), I bought a dozen of his books, I studied and dug deep down in five of them, and I browsed through the remaining. When I shared with someone my intellectual adventure, his criticism was scathing: "I could not care less for an author who needs those many volumes to present his thought". My friend shook me because it sounds indeed paradoxical to write so extensively about a journey that has no maps, directions or distances.
Did I lose my effort? In no way. Rereading the Indian writer, first, and following the teachings of the Buddha, afterwards, I left my confusion behind.  Krishnamurti's speeches (many of his books were transcripts of them), like the Buddha’s discourses, far from being speculations about theories, are invitations to the observation of the contents of the mind by those asking questions to the speaker; listeners, during the dialogues, can parallelize within themselves the introspection that the speaker is suggesting. Readers may do similarly as they go through the written texts. Self-observation, I noticed then, is something that we seldom practice.
What is the territory of Krishnamurti’s ‘truth’? "Man is an amphibian who lives simultaneously in two worlds: the given (matter, life and consciousness) and the home-made, the world of symbols (where we make use of a great variety of symbol-systems: linguistic, mathematical, pictorial, musical, ritualistic…). Without such symbol-systems we should have no art, no science, no law, no philosophy... In other words, we would be animals”, says Aldous Huxley in the foreword to a book by Krishnamurti. Unfortunately, adds the English writer, certain symbols in the domain of religion and politics, when we act in response to them, they can carry humans to use the same forces that they have developed "as instruments for collective suicide and mass murder".
Thanks to the world of symbols, we understand a significant portion of the world of the given. However, while scientists already understand matter to a good extent and have glimpses of insight in the functioning of life, they are fully ignorant in the field of consciousness. The portion of the world of the given that scientists still cannot grasp is the ‘pathless land’ of the Indian Sage. It is there where some segments of the world of symbols -the religious dogmas and the political doctrines- find fertile ground to seize, with the tragic results we know.
What are our hypothetical not yet proven truths? Those we learned from our parents? The ones we were taught in school? The ones we copied from our adolescent friends? Those we read in some persuasive text? The ones we heard from some talkative speaker? Let us respond with caution because only the silent mind can be impartial.
“Truth cannot be repeated; when repeated it becomes a lie’, says Krishnamurti. He adds: “Take, for example, the feeling of love. Can you repeat it? When you hear the words 'love your neighbor', is that a truth to you? It is truth only when you do love your neighbor; and that love cannot be repeated but only the word. Yet most of us are happy with the repetition, 'Love your neighbor'. Merely repeating certain ideas is not reality”.
Religious leaders in their sermons and political leaders in their talks are repeaters of what they read in their sacred books or their doctrinal manuals (when not in their bank accounts). Do you think, patient reader, that your religious doctrine or your political creed is the 'truth'? If it is so, please read again the quote that opens this note and ask yourself, leaving aside the biases of upbringing: “Would this be 'my truth' if I had been handed over for adoption to foreign parents, on the other side of the planet, when I were just a newborn?”

Gustavo Estrada
Author of 'INNER HARMONY through MINDFULNESS MEDITATION' 

Why do so few People Meditate?

"Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Suppose further that the pill increases self-esteem, improves memory, is all-natural and costs nothing. Would you take it? This pill exists and it is called ‘meditation’." Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt asks the question and answers it in his book 'The Happiness Hypothesis'. If it is so, why do so few people use such medicine?

Pretexts abound. The most common –I cannot concentrate– is, indeed, the best reason to start meditating. Cravings and aversions, the components of our redundant ego, are the cause of the resistance. The frantic and bossy redundant ego –"the monkey in the forest", for the Buddha; "the voice in your head that pretends to be you", for Eckhart Tolle; "the butterflies of the night, intrusive and restless", for Saint Teresa of Ávila –refuses to meditate.

After immobilizing our autonomous, essential self, the redundant ego deprives us from freedom of action and becomes the decision maker in charge in our life. What does mindfulness meditation do? Its continued practice downsizes the redundant ego, ends its controlling power, annihilates it eventually, and gives the power back to the essential self.

Mindfulness meditation was developed by the Buddha twenty-four centuries ago. In its basic form, the meditator sits motionless, with closed eyes, in a comfortable position and in a quiet place, for as long as possible, impartially observing his/her breath and returning the attention to it, whenever the mind wanders. There are several other approaches to meditation (raja yoga, zazen, transcendental...); these, however, are 'lower power pills'.

Mindfulness meditation is the most important part of the recipe the Buddha proposed for the elimination of human suffering –anxiety and stress in modern terminology–. Inner harmony, the ensuing destination of meditation, is the absence of suffering.

Neuroscience is beginning to understand the functioning of meditation. Neurons, the cells of our nervous system, which includes the brain, do not work in isolation. Instead, they are organized in ensembles or circuits that process specific types of information. Some groups order the execution of tasks or the escalation of their activity (excitatory circuits); others stop actions or diminish their momentum (inhibitory circuits).

From the physiological point of view, mindfulness meditation is an exercise in physical stillness (the easy part) and mental silencing (the hard part); as such, it is an intensive training of the inhibitory circuits that restrain our body and appease our mind. Following the rule of 'use it or lose it', the inhibitory neuronal circuits, when they are underused or ignored, become lazy or paralyze, and suspend their healthy role of control.

For example, if we continue eating, after being already full, we are overlooking the inhibitory circuit that says "enough!" If we go through a threatening incident and are still frightened long after the event, we are ignoring the circuit that commands "calm down now!" When the inhibitory guards notice that we are bypassing them, they get bored and stop working. Result? Gluttony, overweight, high blood pressure, cardiologist... Or unfounded fears, traumas, compulsive panics, psychotherapist...

The practice of mindfulness meditation turns on and off, repeatedly and intensively, the inhibitory circuits (distracted, inhibition off; focused, inhibition on) and, in a sort of neuronal calisthenics, it returns them to their normal functionality. Then the sweet tooth will be satisfied as soon he or she has eaten just the normal portion and the obsessive fearful will relax when the danger is gone.

With persistent practice of mindfulness meditation, several things begin to happen: (1) meditation becomes a pleasant task and a habit that does not demand effort to find time for it; (2) the meditator enters deeper and deeper levels of mental silence; (3) the faculty of awareness is strengthened; (4) health improves. These developments just happen; then, without us seeking it or being aware of what is going on, inner harmony spontaneously enters our life.

While the mind of a person is in the hands of the redundant ego, neither the teachings of the Buddha nor neurology will convince him or her of the benefits of meditation. Interested beginners need to jump instinctively into the water. Logic reasoning will never persuade the redundant ego to act. Do not limit yourself then, dear reader, to simply test this wonderful pill... Without much thought, start taking it today...  And every day.

Gustavo Estrada
http://www.harmonypresent.com/Armonia-interior 

Is the Mind a Sixth Sense?

As everybody knows, the five conventional senses are sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Their associated organs–eyes, ears, nose, tongue and the neuronal receptors located in the skin and other parts of the body–provide sensory signals, both from outside and within the body, that are transmitted to the brain where they are perceived and processed, or ignored.

Seeing is what our eyes do, smelling is what our nose does, and so on. “The mind is what our brain does,” says Canadian-American evolutionary scientist Steven Pinker. This sentence needs further qualification: The mind is what our brain does–more precisely, what our prefrontal cortex does–and the brains of other animals do not. Mind is the complex of elements in our brain that feels, perceives, wills, remembers, reasons and is conscious of the self that owns that brain.

Is the mind a sixth sense? The Buddha thinks so. The answer to this question invites controversy since there is no agreement on the number of ‘senses’ we possess. However, the statement that the mind is indeed a sense implies that, as the other five, it is also a biological phenomenon and a product of evolution by natural selection.

Regarding its biological nature, says the English philosopher Gilbert Ryle, “minds are not ghosts harnessed to bodily machines”. There are no separate workings of the mind and workings of the body. Without metaphysical interventions, mind 'occurs’ in the brain, which is a part of the body.

With respect to evolution, the five traditional senses preceded by eons the hypothetical sixth one. Likely smell was first. Millions of years ago, one of the things that rudimentary live entities did, besides copying themselves, was learning to perceive the odors of the molecules they would seize for their organisms; current plants, which lack sensory organs, do smell one another.

In an extremely slow sequence, living beings were able to taste, touch, hear and see. Then, a few moments ago in the 3,500-million-year timeline of life, our hominid ancestors, able to ponder and recognize their existence, made their unexpected appearance. How could this happen?

At some point, as a result of genetic mutations, some distant ancestors developed a rudimentary consciousness the progress of which became an evolutionary reward to a number of qualities that favored survival.

In a thought experiment, Portuguese-American neurobiologist Antonio Damasio compares the potential for survival of two remote anthropoid apes, one with some elementary hints of a mental function, a bit of personal history or a very simple grasp of individuality, and a second one with no trace of mind, memory or sense of identity.

The first ape, when facing a certain threat, not only experienced fear and made instinctive fight-or-flight decisions, as would any mammal, but also he or she could recall previous similar circumstances and reproduce actions that had already proved helpful. The odds of survival of that first anthropoid were certainly higher than those of the second primate; every success of the latter, the ‘oblivious’ one, was exclusively random.

Whether or not a sense, it is clear that mental faculties, including the recognition of the self, are the result of evolution by natural selection; alternatives to this line of thought require metaphysical beliefs.

With no notion of the evolution of species, the Buddha is very specific about the material nature of the sense of identity. The Sage declares that “there is no supernatural expression in the body, the sensory signals, the perceptions, the mental formations (conditionings) or the consciousness of a human being”. Twenty four centuries later, naturalist Charles Darwin, the first person ever to speak about evolution and evolutionary psychology, shows how species transformed to reach modern man, the top bough of the hierarchy of life.

All our mental faculties, including the construction of our identity, are biological phenomena improved through time by natural selection. The acceptance of this fact puts our feet on the ground; this is what is important. The acceptance or rejection of the mind as a sixth sense is a secondary issue.

Atlanta, September 18, 2014

www.harmonypresent.com

Essential Self and Redundant Ego

The sense of identity or self is the union of aggregates (such as body, sensory signals, perceptions…) that constitutes the uniqueness of a person and manifests as continuity and consistency in the individual’s behavior. According to ‘orthodox’ Buddhism, suffering–anxiety and stress in modern terminology–originates in our sense of identity and results from our attachment to the meanings of ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘mine’ and ‘myself’.  These words set excluding boundaries between each individual and the rest of the world.

Do we have to extinguish the self to eliminate suffering? No, ascetic renunciation is not a practical solution to anxiety or stress. Instead we need to get rid of the redundant ego, a more reasonable and viable alternative. What is redundant ego? Let us talk about the neuronal software that creates the self.

Our sense of identity is coded in the prefrontal cortex of our brain as zillions of not-yet-understood neuronal instructions.  A fraction of this huge number contains the basic software code that we need for an effective and serene life; this portion sets rules for what we call essential self.

Somewhere else there also exists a big chunk of instructions that handles all our undesirable conditionings and habits–the harmful formations in Buddhist terminology. Such harmful formations generate the cravings that lead to greed and addictions, the aversions that cause panics and hatred, and the biases that blind our understanding; they make up our redundant ego. If we are to end suffering, we must inhibit all harmful mental formations, that is, we must turn off their associated neural instructions.

The redundant ego grows out of behaviors, originally innocuous but that swell out of control, such as the desire for that extra food we should not eat, the dislike for that person that failed us, or the unconditional support to our doctrinarian affiliations. The essential self, on the other hand, is the reduced, downsized self that remains once the harmful formations have been silenced, that is, what is left out from our inflated self once we suppress the redundant portion.

Once we have eliminated our redundant ego, the essential self takes over our life. Then, effortlessly, without any struggle to complete specific goals or reach certain destinations, we will peacefully flow with our existence.

Michelangelo, the great Italian Renaissance artist, believed that images already existed in the blocks of marble as if they were locked in there. Before the first cut, he thought, the sculptor should discover the idea within and then proceed to remove the excess material. Michelangelo, so easy for him, just chipped away from the marble what was not statue.

In the same manner, our inflated self, jam-packed with harmful formations, is like a huge stone, very, very heavy; our essential self, our own piece of art, lies somewhere within that rock. If we are to find it, as the artist suggests for marble, we also have to remove the excess. We do possess the skills to chip away the portion that is not really us; the endeavor–just ask Michelangelo–does require much perseverance.

When we are done, we will experience our own existence and everything else very differently. Our essential self comes out spontaneously after silencing our harmful mental formations and removing our redundant ego. We do not find our essential self through reasoning dissections or belief systems because these depend upon the mental formations that already make up our inflated self.

Neither can we rely on masters, spiritual teachers or gurus. Some sages might point the right direction but nobody can steer us toward our essential self; we have to find it by ourselves. We do not develop, build or refine our essential self; it is already in there. Neither can we come across it through intellectual gimmicks; the process is about quieting mental noises and unlearning–deprogramming, erasing–harmful mental habits.

Once Michelangelo removed the superfluous fragments in the blocks of marble, the harmony of his Pietà, his David or his Moses was magnificent. When we cut down the surplus material of our inflated self’s big stone, right there, within us, our essential self will manifest, vibrating in inner harmony. We just have to remove the unnecessary.

Adapted from ‘Inner Harmony through Mindfulness Meditation’

Atlanta, September 7, 2014
www.harmonypresent.com

Will Supercomputers Subdue the Human Race?

I refuse to accept the idea that we, humans, could soon build machines similar or, even worse, superior to us - machines that would think, understand, solve problems, have consciousness, experience pleasure and pain, feel emotions… and compete with us. In the domains of physiology, however, twenty-first-century science fiction seems to be much more hard science than bizarre fiction. Many futurologists are quite aggressive in their predictions and a few argue that computers not only will leave us behind us but they will also overpower us. Inventor Ray Kurzweil predicts that humans will be producing self-conscious robots by 2030 and that by 2046 computers we will outdo us. I hope not.

Software and hardware designers have generally programmed computer systems following standard logic, as created through time by brains that are identical to those of the designers. In other words, today's computer systems, however powerful they are, are just imitatators of our reasoning faculty, one of the top qualities of human beings.

Now some ambitious visionaries, who call themselves 'neuromorphic engineers', are targeting the design of computers, not to create machines operating as one of the qualities of the brain (that is, not as followers of the rules of logic) but as the owners of such quality ( that is, as the brain itself). Instead of imitating their properties, neuromorphic engineers hope to build devices that operate as ‘brains’.

According to Karlheinz Meier, a physicist at the University of Heidelberg and one of the leaders of the new branch of engineering, to achieve such ambitious goal the revolutionary machines should display at least three characteristics that our brain does have and current computers do not: (1) low power consumption, (2) fault tolerance, and (3) self-learning capability. While our brain consumes just twenty watts, any super -computer spends megawatts. While a faulty transistor can cripple a microprocessor, neurons repair themselves and, in selected brain regions, the nervous system may replace the dying ones. While intelligent computers must be programmed to learn, brains are self-learners by nature.

There are generous budgets and ambitious projects on neuromorphic engineering. There is going to be extraordinary progress both in robotics, in general, and in bioelectronics (the application of electronics in biological processes), in particular. Astounding developments in specialized equipment to support specific physiological functions—vision, hearing, mobility, artificial organs—will keep surprising us.

The list of Dr. Meier, however, is directional but not complete. It is obvious that our brains’ processing speed and data storage capacity cannot compete with the super-machines’ power in those areas. Life and consciousness, however, are well beyond the scope of today's science. I doubt that, between now and 2046, scientists will be able to create devices that simulate our sensitivity to pleasure and pain, or the emotions and feelings from there resulting.

It is good if this does not happen. Feelings encompass love and hatred, as well as altruism and greed. Those who watched "2001: A Space Odyssey ", the 1968 movie of film director Stanley Kubrick and novelist Arthur C. Clarke, might remember HAL, the computer that ‘plays’ in the movie, has emotions and, at some point, rebels against the ship’s crew and kills one of the travelers. In the same way as HAL wanted to take command of the spaceship, some futurists believe that robots will try to dominate the world, once they overpower us, that is, they will display, with more intensity, our hatred and greed—faults these that in modern humans seem to shade love and altruism.

HAL did not materialize in 2001 and I do not believe the 2046 super-machines will fall in love or jump joyfully when their sport team scores. (Will they have a favorite team?) Unless they are programmed to act so, they will never swear or shout if someone hits them hard enough to break a few of their integrated circuits. Consequently, I am confident that, if the computers of the future are unable to display such behaviors, much less will they want to take over the Planet.

Gustavo Estrada

Author of Inner Harmony through Mindfulness Meditation

Gustrada1@gmail.com