Activation of Our Second System of Cognition and Connection

As the Ornstein’s note in GOD 4.0 this alternate second system of consciousness is not a physical organ or a specific set of cells in the brain, it is a quiescent faculty.

As the Ornstein’s note in GOD 4.0 this alternate second system of consciousness is not a physical organ or a specific set of cells in the brain, it is a quiescent faculty. They point out that, thanks to neuroscience, we now know how the mind and brain do this, and for the first time, we can explore how this innate mode of cognition can be activated in a way relevant to our rapidly changing modern world.

The normal step-by-step, moment-by-moment way of dealing with the world — which is useful for crossing the street or cutting up carrots — gets bypassed, shoved aside. And what’s called the “default mode network,” which is the center of the imaginal part of normal consciousness, is deactivated and switches from an everyday “small world” of limited connections to one in which connections are expanded.

The interfering, competing activity involves a specific shutoff of brain activity in the right parietal lobe, the area of the right hemisphere that maintains the sense of self. This deactivation of the self is necessary for a holistic system of cognition to emerge.

It’s important to understand that deactivating this area of the brain that controls self, also controls time and space, enhances virtues such as forgiveness, gratitude, humility, and allows us to take a “higher” view of life. As one sage put it: “My humility which you mention is not there for you to be impressed by it. It is there for its own reason.”

The Hidden Virtue of Virtues  

All religious and ethical systems that we know counsel being virtuous. The three Abrahamic religions we follow on our human journey emphasize being cooperative, courteous and amenable to the likes and dislikes of others, as do other traditions we’ve mentioned, such as the Hindu Vedas or the teachings the Buddha or Confucius.

They encourage people to practice humility, charity, forgiveness and generosity; to sacrifice for others, feel empathy and treat others with compassion; and to focus on gratitude for what one has instead of envy of what others possess.

What these different virtues — humility, generosity, empathy, patience, compassion, forgiveness, honesty, etc. — all have in common is that they each draw attention away from a focus upon the self. They push toward “ego reduction” and a personal decentration; in other words, they encourage us not to see ourselves as the center of everything. Why is this?

Certainly, virtuous behavior makes a stable society possible by reducing conflict, maintaining social cohesion and enhancing trust and cooperation. But there is a far deeper reason for it — that’s often neglected, forgotten or misunderstood — this relates to our neurobiology and the development of this second system of cognition.

We are unable to attain this higher state of consciousness unless we are free of our “me-first” attitude. This self-centered attitude has helped us survive and be successful and is hardwired in normal consciousness, but it blocks the ability to switch to our second mode of cognition.

So, the injunction to act virtuously, which is found in all traditions, is as a ‘means of travel,’ intended to move consciousness away from our ordinary, self-centered mode to a greater vision — as do other “ego-reduction” techniques. All of this clarifies why spiritual experiences are described as “selfless,” “timeless,” “placeless,” “thing-less” and “higher,” and why they’re nonverbal and so difficult to talk about — and, if talked about, confuse the listeners and sometimes even put them off.

For the same reason, service to others can be found highlighted in almost all religious traditions and expounded in the lives of their prophets. Here are some examples:

 “. . . whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” (Mark 10:43-45, New International Version [NIV])

Tirmizi, a Sufi of the 8th century said, “He who does not know about service knows even less about Mastership.”

Mark’s gospel text goes on to remind the followers of Jesus: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve… .”

The Prophet Muhammad is quoted as saying “Do you love your Creator? Love your fellow beings first.”

Saadi, a 13th-century Sufi and one of the major Persian poets, wrote that “The Path is none other than service of the people.”

Again, from a psychological point of view, “service” directs attention away from the individual, and that moves consciousness away from the self to experience the unity of the world and, at the same time, to understand one’s place in it.

Because this is a new area of research, only a few of the virtues we’ve listed have been studied.

Forgiveness is one virtue for which the concomitant brain functions have been measured. A study of individuals with traumatic brain injury suggests that forgiveness is related to decreased right parietal lobe (RPL) functioning. Decreased RPL functioning leads to decreased focus on oneself, and this seems to be experienced, in turn, as a diminished-felt sense of the perceived wrong to the self, and that leads to an increase in forgiveness, gratitude and empathy. Different amounts of RPL functioning produced different amounts of forgiveness. The greater the decrease in parietal function, the greater was the forgiveness expressed.

In normal, healthy people, new techniques, such as using electric current to deactivate the RPL, also leads to decreased blaming of others and increased forgiveness of transgressions.

“Be In the World But Not Of the World” – the Prophet Muhammad

People frequently ask, “Is withdrawing from modern life necessary?” The answer is “No.” Developing an extended perception of reality isn’t suited to a monastic life. Most spiritual traditions have noted this — as in the saying of the Prophet Muhammad above; others, such as James the brother of Jesus, strongly emphasized participation in the world.

For one thing, monasteries tend to rely on generalized repetitive practices and uniformity, which encourage the psychological opposite. They condition people to believe certain things or act in certain ways and, as a consequence, tend to produce automatism and conditioned-response behavior.

But how to develop this expanded capacity? Many of us have experienced the difficulty in successfully “giving up” doing something; too often, trying to give it up seems only to keep one focused on the forbidden object or enterprise — enhancing the desire rather than taming it. As we mentioned when we talked about the multiple nature of our mind, a key is self-observation: observing yourself as if you were another person. Under the stimulus of self-observation, the mind begins to change, and the links between action and reaction loosen. One useful strategy mentioned in Multimind by Robert Ornstein is to realize that one has multiple selves that can be recognized and organized by “an observer” self. Once that self is stronger one can start to have a choice, and — to paraphrase the words of the Muskogee Creek Native American shaman Bear Heart — you can let the “selves” that no longer serve you die. (Or at least, you can move them aside when necessary).

As noted previously, our everyday mind is in fact a succession of “simpletons” — multiple selves that wheel in and out of consciousness. The key question to ask is: “Am I using it, or is it using me?”

One unique and invaluable way in which to develop this latent ability is through familiarization with a corpus of instrumental literature by the writer and thinker Idries Shah. For those interested in taking this further, we describe this material and its function in detail in our section devoted to storytelling, along with links to published material.

The Road to the Future

As we discussed, our “everyday” mind works as a device for selecting just a few parts of the outside reality that are important for our survival. We don’t experience the world as it is, but as a virtual reality — a small, limited system that has evolved to keep us safe and ensure our survival. The problems of today, and indeed our survival, now depends on us developing an alternative way of perceiving and acting in the larger world.

We are a problem-solving animal. We evolve both physically and mentally in response to challenges, and the most important thing we inherit now is our ability to go beyond our inheritance.

Our Paleolithic ancestors survived almost insurmountable odds 35,000 years ago; our problems today, though entirely different, are equally challenging and equally consequential. To solve them, we need to understand and advance a new view of humanity. Our species is certainly capable of rationality, and we are possessors of sequential reasoning ability and thought, but with an added dimension that humanity has evolved and can develop: the ability and insight to see things whole, and to perceive ourselves as one part of the greater whole. Transcending the norm in this way is at the heart of our humanity and our future.

Developing an expanded consciousness allows us to move beyond beliefs to more direct perception, to move beyond a focus on ourselves to see the unity beyond diversity. Part of our responsibility today, as human beings, is to encourage this.

We are a problem-solving animal. We evolve both physically and mentally in response to challenges, and the most important thing we inherit now is our ability to go beyond our inheritance.

Instead of identifying with tribes or families, we need to bring up our children to identify with humanity itself.  Our schools need to include a new curriculum in which understanding ourselves becomes at least as important as math, geography and the like. We need to understand our human nature — not only its weaknesses and how to overcome them, but also its enormous potential and how to cultivate that.

Our schools need to include a new curriculum in which understanding ourselves becomes at least as important as math, geography and the like. We need to understand our human nature — not only its weaknesses and how to overcome them, but also its enormous potential and how to cultivate that.

Instead of focusing on our own specific countries, we need to understand that we all live on one globe, and to communicate that to our children — especially to adolescents, who are “making up their adult minds” about their role in life. We need a global patriotism instead of a local one. Instead of the news focusing only on specific, exciting stories, a greater focus on the broader, continuing problems we face, and their potential solutions, could help increase people’s understanding and perspective.

We now need to emphasize a diverse basic education that fosters individual curiosity, where both the arts and the sciences can provide a platform for creative ways of looking at problems and coming up with solutions. This would encourage an openness to our innate intuitive capacities and allow them to develop and be experienced naturally.

Once developed, this capacity for a deeper more comprehensive understanding could permanently reconcile differences and encompass objective solutions to problems that appear insurmountable when addressed through normal consciousness.