Super Brain (32 page)

Rudy replied that when we taste the sweetness of a banana, the receptors on our tongue are connected to the banana’s sugar, so in a sense we are participating in its reality at the chemical level. The banana also provides us with proteins that bind receptors that are similar to ours. So we experience a “molecular” form of communication. In the same way, when you digest a banana, its energy gets transformed into your energy, which is a link even more intimate than communication. When you analyze the total DNA in a human, it turns out that more than 90 percent comes from the bacteria that inhabit our bodies in a mutually dependent (symbiotic) manner. Much of our own human DNA is similar to bacterial DNA. And the major organelles that provide us with energy, called mitochondria, are actually bacterial cells that were integrated into our cells for this purpose. Therefore we are genetically woven into the web of life. It forms one matrix of energy, genes, and coded chemical information. No part is separate or isolated. That’s the
aha!
. More and more people are getting the same
aha!
, as evidenced by the rise of the modern ecology movement. Humans are beginning to abandon the illusion that the Earth is ours to manipulate and damage at will, with no dire consequences for us. But even without data about vanishing ozone and rising ocean temperatures, the ancient sages and seers of India, as part of their journey to enlightenment, arrived at the same insight when they declared “the world is in you.” Ecology weaves together every activity that supports life, whether it takes place in our cells or in a banana’s.

Where’s the Proof?

The skeptical viewpoint holds that when a person believes in God, the brain, being capable of creating illusions, fools itself into believing and adopts all the trappings of spirituality. To a skeptic, simple material reality (
This rock is hard. That’s what makes it real
.) is the only kind. All spiritual experience therefore has to be unreal, never mind that blanket doubt applies to Jesus, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, and countless saints and sages revered for thousands of years. It’s all rubbish to the confirmed skeptic. Richard Dawkins, the British ethnologist and science writer who presents himself as a professional atheist, wrote a book for young people,
The Magic of Reality
, which addresses the whole issue of what is real. He informs the reader that if we want to know what’s real, we use our five senses, and when things are too big and far away (e.g., distant galaxies) or too small (e.g., brain cells and bacteria), we augment our senses with devices like telescopes and microscopes. One anticipates that Dawkins will add a caveat that the five senses aren’t always reliable, as when our eyes tell us that the sun rises in the sky in the morning and sets at twilight, but he offers no such caveat.

In Dawkins’s scheme, nothing that we know emotionally or intuitively is valid, and the most fraudulent belief of all is “the God delusion.” (By no means does he speak for all scientists. According to some polls, scientists believe in God and even attend religious services more frequently than the general population.)

The rift between materialism and spirituality—facts versus faith—is centuries old by now, and yet the brain may heal it. Solid research about meditation has confirmed that the brain can adapt to spiritual experiences. In Tibetan Buddhist monks who devote their lives to spiritual practice, the prefrontal cortex displays heightened activity; the gamma wave activity in their brains has twice the frequency of normal people’s. Remarkable things are happening in the monks’ neocortex that brain researchers have never seen before.
So shrugging off spirituality as mere self-delusion or superstition is contradicted by science itself.

Skepticism is not the problem; in fact, it’s a red herring. The real problem is the mismatch between modern life and the spiritual journey. Countless people yearn to experience God. Spending a lifetime on the inward path may be deeply rewarding, but few people are lifelong seekers in the traditional sense. Spiritual needs have changed since the age of faith. God has been put on the shelf. As for enlightenment, it’s too difficult, too far away and improbable. The brain can help us here, too. Let’s redefine the state of enlightenment in updated terms. Let’s call it the highest state of fulfillment. What would such a state look like?

Life would be less of a struggle.

Desires would be achieved more easily.

There would be less pain and suffering.

Insight and intuition would become more powerful.

The numinous world of God and the soul would be a real experience.

Your existence would feel deeply meaningful.

These goals give us a realistic process that can move ahead by degrees. Enlightenment is about total transformation, but not instant transformation. The brain undergoes its physical shifts as you, its user and leader, reach new stages of personal change. Here is what to look for. Far from being exotic, these are aspects of your own awareness at this moment; all you need to do is expand them.

SEVEN DEGREES OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Inner calm
and
detachment
increase—you can be centered in the midst of outer activity.

Feeling connected
grows—you feel less alone, more bonded with others.

Empathy
deepens—you can sense what others are feeling, and you care about them.

Clarity
dawns—you are less confused and conflicted.

Awareness becomes more
acute
—you get better at knowing what’s real and who is genuine.

Truth
reveals itself—you no longer buy into conventional beliefs and prejudices. You are less swayed by outside opinions.

Bliss
grows in your life—you love more deeply.

You don’t try to achieve these separate aspects of expanded awareness with a head-on attack. Rather, each one appears in its own time following its own rhythm. Nothing needs forcing. One person will notice an increase in bliss earlier—and more easily—than they feel more clarity, while for a second person the reverse is true. As enlightenment unfolds, it follows your nature, and we’re all made differently.

The key is to
want
enlightenment in the first place, which is tied to the whole issue of transformation.

If you want to transform yourself, which is what enlightenment is all about, what does your brain need to do? If it can shift as easily as it is shifting right this minute, there is no serious obstacle. The millions of people yearning for personal transformation already have it in hand, actually. Their brain is transforming itself constantly. Just as you cannot step into a river in the same place twice, you can’t step into the brain in the same place twice. Both are flowing. The brain is a process, not a thing; a verb, not a noun.

Our biggest mistake is to believe that transformation is uncommonly
hard. Imagine an experience in your past that flooded over you and left you feeling changed. The experience could be positive, like falling in love or getting a big promotion; or it could be negative, like losing your job or getting a divorce. In either case, the effect on your brain is both short-term and long-term. This applies to memory, since you have specific brain regions for short-term and long-term memory, but the effect goes much further. Overwhelming experiences change your sense of self, your expectations, your fears and wishes for the future, your metabolism, your blood pressure, your sensitivity to stress, and anything else monitored by the central nervous system. Overwhelming experiences transform you.

A good movie is enough to cause powerful shifts in the nervous system. Hollywood blockbusters compete to explode the audience’s sense of reality and offer new vicarious thrills. Spider-Man swings through the man-made canyons of New York City on sticky ropes, while Luke Skywalker jockeys his lightship to enter the Death Star, and dozens of other dazzling effects exist to transform the brain.

When you walk out of a movie, its effect stays with you; the glow is more than just temporary. Kissing the girl in your own mind, defeating the villain, marching with the conquering heroes—viewed from the level of the neuron, none of these experiences are unreal. They are real because your brain has been altered. A movie is a transformation machine, and so is life itself. Once you accept that transformation is a natural process—one that every cell participates in—enlightenment is no longer out of reach.

Of course, winning the girl in a movie didn’t happen in real life. Your brain is fooled for a while, but you aren’t. You bring yourself back to reality (where love and romance lead to the knotty problems of relationships). This is the key. Bringing your attention back to what is real can become a spiritual practice, known as
mindfulness
. Mindfulness can be made into a way of life, and when it is, transformation becomes a way of life too, as natural and unforced as anyone could wish.

The Mindful Way

What are you aware of right this minute? Perhaps you don’t have your attention on anything beyond the words on this page. But as soon as the question is asked, “What are you aware of?” your perception wakes up. You notice all kinds of things: your mood, the comfort or discomfort of your body, the temperature in the room, and the light radiating inside it. This shift, which calls attention to reality, is mindfulness.

You can bring your awareness back to reality anytime you want to. You don’t have to force anything; you don’t need superhuman willpower. But mindfulness does feel different from ordinary awareness. Our awareness is normally focused on a specific object or task. That’s how we train our brains—to see the thing before our eyes but not the background, which is awareness itself. The background we take for granted—until we are shocked back into awareness of it. Imagine that you are on a date with someone who seems very attentive. He (or she) can’t take his eyes off you. He’s hanging on to every word. Naturally, you get lost in the pleasure of this feeling. But then he says, “I’m sorry, but do you know you have some spinach between your teeth?”

At that moment your awareness shifts. You have been shocked out of your pleasant illusion. Being brought back to reality doesn’t have to be unpleasant. Imagine that you are about to meet a VIP, and you’re feeling nervous and anxious. The moment before you shake hands, however, somebody leans over and whispers in your ear, “Mister Big has heard great things about you. He already wants to give you the contract.” Another kind of shift occurs: you switch from an anxious state into a more confident one. Mindfulness is about the ability to do so.

The ability comes naturally. A few words whispered in your ear can trigger dramatic, instantaneous change. At the level of hormones, we know part of the answer, but we are far from knowing how the brain shifts its reality at the flick of a switch. But there
is clearly a difference between owning this ability and letting our brain own it. Mindfulness makes the difference. Instead of having other people shock you back to reality—whether the shock is pleasant or unpleasant—you bring yourself back. To define
mindfulness
as “awareness of awareness” fits, but it sounds, to us, arcane; the simpler explanation is that you can return to reality anytime you want.

Unfortunately, we have all surrendered some of this ability. Certain areas of our life are safe to pay attention to, while others are off limits. Women typically like to discuss their feelings, for example, and complain that men don’t or won’t or can’t. Men typically are more comfortable focusing on work, sports, and various projects—almost anything that doesn’t touch an emotional sore spot. But in Eastern spiritual traditions, there’s a vast field that most Westerners barely think about: awareness of awareness. The term for this in Buddhism is mindfulness.

Whenever you check in on yourself, you are being mindful. Before a date or job interview, you might check to see how nervous you feel. During childbirth, as the doctor asks, “How are you doing?” a woman monitors if her pain is getting too great. In this very basic kind of mindfulness, you are looking at moods, emotions, physical sensations—all the things that fill the mind. What if you took away the contents of your mind? Would you face a frightening cold emptiness? No. A great painter might wake up one day to discover that all his paintings had been stolen, but he would still have something invisible and far more precious than any masterpiece: the ability to create new ones.

Mindfulness is like that, a state of creative potential. Once you take away the contents of the mind, you have the most potential, because you are in a state of complete self-awareness. (Once a music lover came to the renowned spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti and exclaimed rapturously about how beautiful a concert had been. Krishnamurti replied astutely, “Beautiful, yes. But are you using music to distract you from yourself?”) True mindfulness is a way of
checking in on how self-aware you are. As you know by now, super brain depends upon a growing self-awareness, so being mindful is crucial. It’s a way of life.

People who aren’t mindful can seem at once oblivious and self-involved. They are too self-centered to connect with other people; they lack sensitivity in many kinds of social situations. The contrast between being self-centered and being mindful is quite striking, so let’s look at the difference. Both states are produced in the neocortex, yet they don’t feel the same. Being self-centered almost demands that you indulge in illusions, since everything revolves around your image. We aren’t judging against being self-centered; it’s the perspective that consumer society trains us all to have—it goads us to buy things that will make us better looking, younger, hipper, more entertained, and momentarily distracted.