excerpt-rewiring the brain

8/8/2019 Excerpt-Rewiring the Brain

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PREFACE

Though at one level, stress is the running thread of this book, its scope is much wider. The larger focus is to forge acquaintance with ones self by understanding its constructs of feelings, thoughts, memories, and why one behaves the way on

e does. It is an exploratory journey in our inner world, where the roots of ouraspirations, ambitions, pride, and prejudice lie. We go through myriads of joysand sorrows in the long course of life, but hardly have the patience to pause and ponder over the reasons that make them.

Does it matter? Yes, much more than perhaps one realizes.

Stress should not be seen as an isolated issue. It betrays the quality of indivi

dual self in its ceaseless action of living. We have one and only lifethe most precious thing we happen to possess, and it is but natural that we struggle hard t

o do our utmost to make it a wonderful experience. Stress, in its overt or covert forms, works as a persistent factor that undermines the spontaneity, joy, andbeauty of life.

In this competitive and complex world, one faces countless factors of stress that are unavoidable and immutable, including illness, accident, or death. There are some other factors that can be altered through efforts, which play a more decisive role in life. These are individual attitude, mental tendencies, and ways one interacts with external world. There is much truth in the saying, Life is 10 pe

rcent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it.

An objective understanding of these individual factors means that half the battle of tackling stress is won. Hence, the book seeks to help the reader face and understand the workings of inner self and its intricacies without resorting to psychological escape or suppression.

Yet an objective understanding is only the first step. It does not resolutely ch

ange our mental habits and conditionings that are hardwired in the brain. The negative emotions that fuel stress and anxiety have unyielding force, often not amenable to reason. Similarly, drills of positive thinking and self-hypnotism through beliefs and ideologies accrue only temporary solace and euphoria that wearsoff sooner than expected.

This suggests the need to go beyond the remedies prevalent now and look for fundamentally new avenues for solution. In such effort, this book explores the possibility of using the power of consciousness to rewire the brain and tackle stressand emotional afflictions in a lasting manner. Let me add that this approach does not involve any religious or mystical beliefs. read more



CHAPTER 2: MEMORY: THE PRIME MOVER

In the arduous pursuit of daily life, we hardly have the time and energy to pause and look inward to figure out the roots of our actions and why we behave the way we do. If we carefully peer into our mind, the following scenario might emerge. Even though our thoughts, feelings and memories are mediated by external andinternal stimuli, they seem to work in an autonomic mode, as if having their own

willpower. Like some factory workers, they are seized with the frenzy of theirwork, jostling and cooperating with each other. The end products of their laborare our aspirations and dreams, our pride and prejudice, our anxieties and worries, which get manifested, rather packaged, in the externalities of our behaviorand actions. As devoted workers, they service promptly the demands of our bodyourdesires for joy and comforts, our urges of hunger, thirst, and love.

The modern neurologists also paint a somewhat similar picture of self that is fragmentary and disorienting. They tell us that the brain cells called neurons arethe actual workers that manufacture our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and memor

y. The human brain has billions of neurons that communicate with each other by making synaptic connections. They constantly fire electrochemical signals in synchronized fashion and thus create these mental processes in our brains. In otherwords, the patterns of neural firings are the actual correlates of our feelings,thoughts, and memory.

In the opinion of some neuroscientists, our subjective experience of self is nothing but the constant interplay of vast neural assemblies in the brain. While observing the neurons with electronic scanning gadgets, they were astonished by the hectic pace of their firing actions, which reminded of a noisy fish market bustling with activities.

It might shock someones aesthetic sense to find description of the brain activities in such metaphoric idiom of the commercial world. ......... . Let that be asit may; but it does make the very significant point that behind the vital worldof our thoughts, emotions, and feelings lies the neural infrastructure that is inherently mechanical, material, and driven by electrochemical impulses. read more

CHAPTER 3: THOUGHT: THE ERRAND BOY

Memory that we talked about in the previous chapter is a quiet and sneaky operator in the arena of mind in contrast to thought. Memory lies in the subterraneanrealm of our inner world and has to be evoked and ushered on to the conscious stage for experience, while thought prefers to work in the daylight of conscious mind. Thought represents the tip of the iceberg that is visible, while memory forms the part of its submerged and unknown segment. The significance of thought is, therefore, quite apparent and self-evident, but its absence would be akin to being plunged into a dark vacuum. The empty darkness without the light of thoughtmakes many persons very uncomfortable, and some compare it with a sort of near-death experience.

No wonder Descartes said, I think therefore I am. Thought is construed as a hard a



easy to move ahead and unravel the secrets of the entire brain and consciousness. ........ However, he admits some real problems being faced in grasping the holistic dynamics of not only the more complex issue of consciousness, but even thesectoral functions like vision, smell and other perceptual processes.

There are several other experts who feel that consciousness can be understood byexplaining how cognitive and behavioral functions are performed by our brain. But, they have not made spectacular headway in resolving the issue. They encounter mysteries of the integrative globality of consciousness as well as the properties of awareness and understanding.

In contrast, the experts on the other side of the divide hold the view that consciousness is noncomputational and any physical account of mental processes, sectoral or otherwise, cannot explain the mysteries of consciousness. read more

CHAPTER 6: EXPANSION OF INNER AWARENESS

The majestic beauty of great mountains has the awesome power to immobilize our mind by knocking off the swarms of thoughts and anxieties, which ceaselessly haunt us. During my stay of a few years in Geneva and Vienna, I often drove around the enchanting mountains and lakes. It was an escape that I passionately looked forward to, from the verbose but non-communicative world of diplomacy. The scenicbeauty of the Alps is captivating from a vantage point in the city of Montreuxoverlooking Lake Geneva. A drive farther south in the mountains is simply unforgettable. Also in Austria, the Alps and the serene lakes particularly in the southwest of Salzburg are gorgeous and a treasure of cherishable memories.

It was, however, my encounter with the Himalayas in Nepal that left me speechless. I drove from Kathmandu on the road winding up the hills to reach a lonely teahouse ahead of Nagarkot, a small village. It is the closest point about fifty kilometers from Kathmandu for watching the sunset in the Himalayas. It was my first trip to the place, though I did visit it several times later during my three-year stay in Nepal. When I reached the place, the sun was about to go down, and the sky was absolutely clear without a speck of cloud. The top of the hill I stood upon was overlooking a misty valley that spread across the cascading foothills. Above the deep, misty valleys rose the mighty Himalayas in a panoramic magnificence of innumerable snowy peaks. Beyond the foot hills, the long chain of mountain peaks filled the entire horizon in a semicircular expanse. The peaks piercedthe deep sky with their astounding heights. Some of the snow-clad peaks had started to glisten in orange and light pink with the caressing touch of the soft sun.

Though this description is gleaned from the memory, my actual encounter was a unique experience. My mind was totally submerged, and it became one with the immensity of the awesome beauty unfolding beyond the stretch of the misty valleys andthe cascading chains of foothills. Soon with the approaching twilight, the darkblue sky, the majestic mountains, the valleys, and I appeared to melt into an i

nfinite oneness. The utter silence of the place immobilized my mind, wiping outeven the noise of thought. I could feel the sound of the footsteps of time in the midst of the immense space, which engulfed the identity of everything around.



One time or the other, most of us have encountered such overwhelming awareness that wipes out our thoughts and memories for some moments. In the fullness of itsprimordial sentience, our consciousness immerses in the splendour and charm ofthe scenic beauty silencing the mind totally. read more

CHAPTER 7: BENEFITS OF AWARENESS MEDITATION

In the next chapter, we will go into the details of how meditation actually works and accrues extraordinary benefits of stress-reduction. However, let me mention at least one aspect that is quite relevant here.

While scanning the brain at the time of deep meditation, it was observed in several independent studies that the frontal lobe and parietal lobe were deactivatedin terms of reduced levels of blood flow. The frontal lobe is the seat of our r

easoning power, thoughts, ability of anticipating future, and planning. It alsogenerates some of the secondary emotions peculiar to humans such as guilt, pride, sympathy, wonder, and compassion. On the other hand, the parietal lobe processes the sensory data from the external world and orients us to our surroundings.It is also responsible for our sense of time and space. Under stress, the frontal and parietal lobes operate in frantic pace or fight-or-flight mode.

During meditation, the activities of the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe arepractically stopped and the sensory signals from them, which cause anxieties andstress, are not transmitted to other parts of the brain, including those responsible for primary emotions of fear, sadness, anger, and aggressiveness. The deac

tivation of the parietal lobe detaches the meditators from the sense of time andspace or the external world and induces a feeling of timelessness and oneness without any boundaries. The deactivation of frontal lobe results in dissipating worries and anxieties as well as the me-ness with its psychological baggage, whichis bothersome and nagging. All these factors prevent stress and bring about deeptranquillity of mind.

This explains why meditation accrues the antistress benefits. A curious question, however, arises: What is the difference between psychological suppression of painful feelings and such reduction of the sensory inputs from those areas of thebrain? read more

CHAPTER 8: REWIRING THE BRAIN

The advent of consciousness in evolution bestowed upon the human species the power of conscious behavior and more intelligent action, which meant a large measure of freedom from reflexive and predetermined behavior. It meant a good deal ofliberty from the biorobotics that governed life in the earlier phase of our evolution. Unfortunately, there is no room for complacency because there are some factors that might threaten our innate liberty of consciousness.

One factor is the restrictive nature of thought per se that operates in a narrow



periphery. The second is the fact that we are increasingly submitting ourselvesto habitual and fossilized patterns of mental activities and thus surrenderingthe precious freedom of enlightened and conscious action. We are under the belief that thought is our free and conscious actionan expression of our intelligent Choice. That is true, but not entirely! Unfortunately, our thoughts and emotionshave become more habitual and have acquired a greater degree of reflex and autonomic patterns than we realize. It means that the limited periphery of our consci

ous thought and intelligent willpower is further curtailed.

Our minds are fettered with numerous conditionings that are caused by individualactions, hereditary factors, and the external world, including social and cultural influences. Of course, certain reflexive tendencies are evolved to cope withthe circumstances of individual life, while others are passed on genetically asthe self-protective adaptations in the course of evolution. One cannot find fault with such self-protective reflexive behavior. For instance, the impulsive fears of reptiles and insects are still useful, though these were prewired in the early evolutionary phase when reptiles ruled the planet.

Many of our social and cultural rituals and beliefs also fall into this categoryof outdated relics of past, which include our superstitions, hierarchical behavior, aggressive postures, the tendency of domination over others and violence. The feelings of tribalism, racial hatred, and even patriotism are also evolutionary baggage of old herd instincts. Of course, patriotism and nationalism have practical values of governance and social order. Our prejudices and social divisions that cause violent conflicts are nothing but slavery to habitual ideas and emotions.

How do we change and create the human society that is more enlightened, liberal,and not divided? ........... read more

CHAPTER 9: A SECOND BRAIN AND ANXIETIES

At one time or another, all of us have experienced butterflies in the stomach while approaching a challenging task like an interview for employment, or when onesname is announced for the stage as the next speaker. Such fl uttering sensations of nervousness or sinking feelings of fear are also felt in the stomach when one has to face something ominous. Has it ever surprised us that though our brainis in the head, such feelings are felt in our stomach?

Such immaterial action of the stomach is not limited to sinking or fl uttering feelings. It occasionally performs another task of the brain, namely, the intuitive action. We use expressions like a gut feeling or gut reaction to indicate an instinctive feeling or action. Such expression is not a cliché, but it describes theactual action performed by the gut. One wonders how the gut possesses the abilities, which normally belong to the dynamic entity of the brain.

Scientists reveal to us an astonishing fact that every human being has two brains: one in the head and other in the gut. Dr. Michael D. Gershon , a professor of



anatomy and cell biology at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, wrote a book in 1998 entitled The Enteric Nervous System: A Second Brain. This book attracted worldwide attention and praise. Not only Gershon, but a few other scientists have observed that the fluttering sensations, sinking fears, and the intuitive actions are caused by the second brain. These findings have openeda host of new avenues for research in the vast subject of gastrointestinal problems as well as the emotive interdependence of the two brains.

Scientists theorize that at the dawn of our evolution when we were very tiny creatures stuck to the rocks waiting for food to pass by, we had only this tiny brain. As life evolved with larger biosystems, animals needed a more complex brainfor survival. Consequently, a brain inside the skull along with the central nervous system was evolved. However, the ancient brain was preserved as an independent circuit, which is referred to as the enteric nervous system (ENS). .... readmore

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