I strongly believe a major cause of neuroticism, emotional agony, and mental illness is our minds are more complex than much of our thinking and most of our communication.
This causes us to be like prisoners trapped in small space when we are capable of much greater freedom.
A new study illustrates why this happens.
The study show how auditory hallucinations can be induced in people who are not otherwise prone to hearing them.
Pairing a stimulus in one modality (vision) with a stimulus in another (sound) can lead to task-induced hallucinations in healthy individuals. After many trials, people eventually report perceiving a nonexistent stimulus contingent on the presence of the previously paired stimulus. (Pavlovian conditioning–induced hallucinations result from overweighting of perceptual priors)
Since this effect can be induced fairly simply it shows that:
These data demonstrate the profound and sometimes pathological impact of top-down cognitive processes on perception… (from the study itself: Pavlovian conditioning–induced hallucinations result from overweighting of perceptual priors)
Note that these hallucinations “result from overweighing perceptual priors.”
A “perceptual prior” is, in these cases, a mistaken assumption about reality.
If our auditory and visual “realities” are susceptible to mistakes like these, how much more is our psychology?
Due to our generally very simple ways of interacting with other people, we are essentially forced to hallucinate who they are and at the same time who we are.
That is, our complex minds are essentially forced to see ourselves and others in simple, hallucinatory terms that cannot possibly be true.
I believe this is the cause of great mental and emotional distress for all people everywhere.
I also believe that this problem can be largely overcome by practicing FIML
FIML allows us to remove our psychological hallucinations about our FIML partner as they remove theirs about us.
FIML works because it allows partners to escape the simplicities and many hallucinatory traps of ordinary communication.
As far as I know, there is no other method for doing this. FIML is practical psychotherapy that will optimize your mind and psychology by providing the data you need to overcome hallucinating most of your life.
In this respect, FIML is a preeminent Buddhist mindfulness practice done by two (or more) people working together.
I hope the day comes when Buddhist Sanghas will practice FIML among themselves and teach it to lay followers when they have mastered the technique.
FIML is deeply human and not something AI will be able to do. It is very well-suited to this Human Realm because it shows us how delusions are formed, where they lie within us and how to extinguish them.
American Buddhist Net 