By averaging individual EEG responses to 500 images, researchers were later able to identify individual people with 100% accuracy. The main expected use for this research is biometric identification of people wanting to enter secure spaces.
That this research also has implications for social-psychology is what I am interested in today.
If each of us is unique with unique responses to pretty much everything, how are we able to communicate?
We communicate with each other in cultural terms. That is, we use unifying cultural concepts to provide a sense of agreement. Some might say to manufacture an illusion of agreement.
Culture is a hierarchical group of unifying principles that organizes the minds of its members.
Similarly, what we call the “self” or the “ego” is nothing more than a unifying principle that organizes the mind of the individual.
It should not take too much effort to see that what people think of as their “self” is usually an imported hierarchy that comes from the individual’s understanding of the culture to which they belong.
Individuals tailor their imported “selves” in much the same ways that we decorate our rooms or choose our clothes. There is a good deal of leeway in how you construct yourself, but there are also serious limitations.
This why individuals in one culture differ from individuals in another. If they have commonalities, those are often shared cultural roots or instinctive human behaviors that find expression in all societies.
I believe the above view of culture and the individual’s role in it describes a dangerous trap.
This is so because the resonance between “self” and “culture” is a powerful tautology, based on illusions.
No matter how you change culture, the trap remains the same.
Change in culture means little more than a rearrangement of limited parts that will never come together as an enlightened whole because cultures are always lowest common denominators.
Make culture more “tolerant” and it will gradually be undermined and replaced by those who come into the tent under the new rules.
We see exactly this happening with SJWs whose demands for tolerance have morphed into totalitarian demands for tolerance as they define it.
Do as we say or be fired, ostracized, demonstrated against, beaten-up.
I do not see any way to get out of this problem except the Buddhist way. Renounce culture in most of its guises and as an individual withdraw from its worst bs as much as possible.
Culture, as much as the ego or self, is a fundamental delusion. It is the stuff of the first noble truth and it causes suffering.
As a Buddhist, I understand that culture is necessary for our educations up to a point. And I understand that the self is necessary for healthy individual development up to a point.
But once that point has been reached, I renounce the totalitarianism of culture, the totalitarianism of the self, the totalitarianism of any lowest common denominator anything.
Notice I said totalitarianism of.
I can accept and function in a culture that allows great freedom of thought with few rules. I always gladly obey all the rules in national parks and adore the Bill of Rights, though sadly it is slipping away.
Similarly, I am good with a healthy persona restrained by the five precepts and used as a basis for social intercourse and freedom of thought.
Most Buddhist practitioners will immediately understand and agree with the results of a study that shows that people feel better when they tell fewer lies. The study (Telling fewer lies linked to better health and relationships) is modest but worth considering.
Notice that the improvements found in the study come from refraining from lying.
“We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly improved health,” says lead author Anita Kelly. (Same link as above.)
A good deal of Buddhist practice involves refraining from unwholesome thoughts and behaviors and ultimately eliminating them. Refraining from lying, or “false speech,” is the fourth of the Five Precepts, which are the basis of Buddhist morality. Lies cloud the mind and hinder clear thinking.
Buddhist mindfulness gets us to slow down and question how sure we are of our thoughts, feelings, and judgements. It helps us refrain from willfully lying, and it can help us refrain from unconsciously lying if we have the help of a trusted partner.
Another term for unconscious lying is self-deception. Self-deception may make us feel good for awhile in some circumstances, but in the long-run it is much the same as any other kind of lying. It’s not true. It constitutes inner false speech and causes serious intellectual and emotional contradictions that will almost certainly lead to wrong thoughts, behaviors, and interpretations.
Michael S. Gazzaniga in an online essay has this to say:
The view in neuroscience today is that consciousness does not constitute a single, generalized process. It involves a multitude of widely distributed specialized systems and disunited processes, the products of which are integrated by the interpreter module….Our conscious experience is assembled on the fly as our brains respond to constantly changing inputs, calculate potential courses of action, and execute responses like a streetwise kid. (source)
It is our “interpreter module,” to use Gazzaniga’s words, that can and does unconsciously lie to us or allow us to engage in self-deception.
In the same essay, Gazzaniga also says:
In truth, when we set out to explain our actions, they are all post hoc explanations using post hoc observations with no access to nonconscious processing….The reality is, listening to people’s explanations of their actions is interesting—and in the case of politicians, entertaining—but often a waste of time. (Source: same as above)
FIML practice may not be capable of giving us access to “nonconscious processing,” but it will give us access to what is/was in our working memories while showing us that what we said or heard may have been vague, ambiguous, muddled, or wrong.
With the aid of a trusted partner, FIML helps us catch our minds on the fly. Partners are encouraged to refrain from long explanations and just stick to what they remember having been in their minds during the few seconds in question. This forestalls long, self-deceiving explanations.
Beginning FIML partners will likely be amazed at how often their interpretation of what their partner said is completely wrong.
FIML emphasizes using trivial incidents because partners will be much less likely to self-deceive when the incident is minor. A minor mistake is easier to change than a major one. If partners keep working with minor mistakes and clear them up as soon as they arise, how can major misunderstandings even develop?
In the future, we may have brain scans that can help us separate fact from fiction in our minds, but for now, I know of no better way to do it than with a trusted partner in FIML practice. Your partner will help you see the minutiae of your mind as it actually works and impacts them. This leads to a large reduction in lying and self-deception and an increase in feelings of well-being and mutual understanding.
…The most cursory look at the sort of thinking now dominant in the West shows that it is doing the reverse. Anti-racism never concerns itself with the spiritual self-improvement of its beneficiaries. It is concerned with worldly goods, but does nothing to help people improve their lot through effective means such as learning skills or deferring gratification and planning for the future. Its constant message is: You have less because the white man has more, and he has more because he has rigged the game in his favor.
Critical race theory inculcates resentment among children to whom it might otherwise not have occurred to compare themselves invidiously with their white neighbors, and directs their attention away from practical ways to improve their own lives. As we have seen, many societies have been dominated by envy, but I cannot think of another case of a regime systematically trying to maximize envy in the rising generation. It is genuinely cruel to the non-white children who are supposedly its intended beneficiaries, but as we would expect from envy-inspired behavior, the aim appears to be to harm us rather than to help them.
While you may not agree with all of this article, it is worth reading just for having raised the issue of envy and focusing on it.
Personally, I can truthfully say that not understanding the power of envy has caused me many problems. If you do not feel envy or do not feel it much or often, it may not occur to you how often it distorts the thinking of others.
A Buddhist nun, who is a good friend, often used to tell me that “jealousy” or “envy” were the root causes of much of what we were seeing around us.
For years, I always countered her statements with some anodyne explanation but no longer do.
Envy over talent or status and sexual jealousy are among the strongest negative emotions we humans have.
If you are blessed with decent looks and brains and some ability to work productively, you may not realize how much others may be seething with envy.
If you feel envy, practice Buddhism. It will cure that malady well.
If you do not feel envy or do not feel it much, Buddhist contemplations on others—intellectual empathy—may help in understanding that the karma or conditions endured by others can be very difficult for them to bear.
Buddhist monks live simply and have “left home” (the world) both to keep themselves from feeling envy and to keep others from envying them, among other reasons.
If you are blessed (or have earned) a mind rarely sullied by envy, be careful not to be oblivious of it in others. ABN
The out of body part of this story is reasonable evidence that consciousness resides outside of the body and in some circumstances can be accessed as such.
Nowadays, philosophers and some physicists call that greater consciousness ‘mind at large’ or the ‘field of consciousness’ that underlies or inheres in all things.
Buddhists sometimes claim to have achieved awareness of that field of consciousness.
The Buddha is known as the Thus Come One and the Thus Gone One, meaning he came from that deep field of universal consciousness and went back into it when he achieved nirvana.
It’s a wonderful thing that medical science is seeing this side of sentient life and that the evidence for it has grown significantly in recent years. ABN
For some people, sleep brings a peculiar kind of wakefulness. Not a dream, but a quiet awareness with no content. This lesser-known state of consciousness may hold clues to one of science’s biggest mysteries: what it means to be conscious.
The state of conscious sleep has been widely described for centuries by different Eastern contemplative traditions. For instance, the Indian philosophical school of the Advaita Vedanta, grounded in the interpretation of the Vedas – one of the oldest texts in Hinduism – understands deep sleep or “sushupti” as a state of “just awareness” in which we merely remain conscious.
Similar interpretations of deep sleep are made by the Dzogchen lineage in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. According to their teachings, different meditative practices can be followed during wakefulness and sleep to acknowledge the “essence” of consciousness. One of those meditative practices is that of dream yoga or luminosity yoga, which enables the practitioner to recognise the states of dream and sleep. This aims to bring them to a state of “pure awareness”, a state of being awake inside sleep without thoughts, images or even a sense of self.
For western science, this state poses a conundrum. How can you be aware without being aware of something? If these reports are accurate, they challenge mainstream theories that treat consciousness as always about an object. For example, my awareness of the laptop in front of me, or the blue sky rising above my window, or my own breathing. The existence of this state pushes us to reconsider what consciousness is.
In those studies, we found a spectrum of experiences we called “objectless sleep experiences” – conscious states that appear to lack an object of awareness. In all cases, participants who alluded to an objectless sleep experience reported having had an episode during sleep that lacked sensory content and that merely involved a feeling of knowing that they were aware.
This is an interesting article, sent by an alert reader.
From a Buddhist POV, these states are samadhi or dhyana states, which are essential to successful Buddhist practice.
The reason these states are essential is they provide the experience of pure awareness, pure consciousness with zero self and zero referent.
The Mind-Only Buddhist explanation of these states is they are touching on or engaging with the universal Tathagata, or enlightened mind.
In modern philosophical terms, these states are awareness of ‘mind at large’ or some version of ‘quantum consciousness’ or the fundamental ‘field of consciousness or thought’, which is posited as a primary component of the cosmos.
These states are extremely valuable and worth remembering and pursuing.
In higher levels of samadhi, enormous joy or bliss is experienced along with a total absence of self or referent.
The highest samadhi state is perfect equanimity coupled with deep awareness of the Tathagata.
Samadhi states eventually bump up against nirvana.
I love Western civilization, but the one thing it deeply lacks is a tradition of knowing about and using samadhi, which at the very least provides a marvelous and wonderful place to stand aside from all that is mundane.
Philosophically, Buddhism recognizes ‘relative truth or reality’ (mundane reality) and ‘ultimate truth or reality’, the full knowing of which constitutes Buddhist enlightenment.
In many Buddhist traditions, samadhi states are understood to be natural and attainable by anyone who tries diligently.
If you are fortunate enough to experience samadhi without trying, be thankful!
You have gained a deep realization.
One of the most difficult parts of Buddhism for non-Buddhists to understand is the experience of samadhi.
Also fundamental to Buddhism is the experience of a clear conscience, an honest and pure mind which is gained through wholesome moral and ethical thoughts and behaviors. ABN
Proprioception means “one’s own” or “ones’ individual” (Latin proprius) “perception.”
We normally use this word to refer to our physical position in the world—whether we are standing or sitting, how we are moving, and how much energy we are using.
When we dream, our capacity for physical movement, with rare exceptions, is paralyzed. But we still do a sort of proprioception in dreams—a semiotic proprioception, or proprioception within the semiology of the dream.
In dreams, we grope through semiotic associations and respond, gropingly, to them. People and things often look smaller in dreams, or distorted, because we do not have either the need or the capacity to calibrate our physical proprioception as we do in waking life.
Dreams move from one semiotic proprioception to another via our individual four-dimensional (3D plus time) groping/associative function. In one short segment of a dream we are at home, then we go through a door only to find ourselves on a boat in the ocean. Our 4D semiotic proprioception within dreams readily accepts groping, associative shifts like this.
Much of what we perceive when we are awake is memory. We glance at a room we know well and call up our memory of it rather than actually look closely at the room.
I am fairly sure that the memories we call up to aid perception while we are awake are much the same as the groping proprioception we experience in dreams. A major difference is when we are awake we can and do check our waking proprioception with the people and objects around us, while in dreams the associative function has a much freer range.
Notice how dreams move from scene to scene rather slowly. Things can go quickly, but normally dreams grope somewhat slowly along the 4D path of semiotic proprioception.
In waking life, our dreamy use of memory and association to aid perception of the world happens constantly.
When we speak with another person, we use this function to make groping associations concerning what we think they are saying. We grope and respond to them as in a dream while at the same time searching for clues that indicate we are both in the same dream.
These clues that two people may sort of “agree on” while speaking are normally standard public semiotics that belong to whatever culture(s) they share. By “agreeing” on them, we form a sort of agreeable camaraderie with whomever we are speaking, and this can be satisfying, but if we only get this, it can also become deeply unsatisfying.
The four dimensional groping/dreamy function of our mind is far richer than any standard collection of public semiotics. In our public lives—professional, commercial, based on organizations, etc.—we have, at present, little recourse but to accept normal public semiotics, to agree with them and manifest agreement.
We can express some deviation from them and sometimes make jokes about them, but we are generally fairly bound to the semiotics of the culture or organization that generates the context of our speaking. Consider how people in the same church or school are bound by the semiotics of those institutions.
In our intimate relations, however, we do have recourse to investigate and understand how our groping, 4D semiotic proprioception works. This is what FIML does. It allows partners to observe, analyze, and understand the semiotic proprioceptions of their minds as they are actually functioning during interpersonal communication.
If you constantly avoid FIML types of investigations, you will be stuck with a mix of dimly shared public/private semiotics that will tend to become highly ambiguous, even volatile, or very shallow.
Do reclusive and monastic religious practices foster wisdom about the human condition?
A new study indicates that they may.
Insights into social psychological phenomena have been thought of as solely attainable through empirical research. Our findings, however, indicate that some lay individuals can reliably judge established social psychological phenomena without any experience in social psychology. These results raise the striking possibility that certain individuals can predict the accuracy of unexplored social psychological phenomena better than others. (Social Psychological Skill and Its Correlates)
I was unfamiliar with the idea of the scapegoat also being a “truth teller” in a narcissistic family. The truth teller might also be called a witness; it’s the child that knows something is not right and thus threatens the vulnerable narcissist. Many if not most traditional cultures have very large narcissistic components. Their moral strictures, religions, duties, values, manners, etc. almost all contain elements of narcissism. So there is an important historical dimension to this diagnosis.
Aspects of Buddhism as it is traditionally practiced even today can also be seen as being narcissistic or fostering narcissism. Same for all the Abrahamic religions, Confucianism, Aztec beliefs and so on across the globe. Just as consciousness is fundamental to our human reality so are the many ways of interpreting it, almost all of which historically have tended toward narcissistic systems.
Truth tellers typically are most likely to escape the web of the narcissistic family even though their role in it was to be the most despised, the scapegoat. Sometimes I see the Buddha as a truth teller who freed himself from his father’s make-believe world despite the power and luxury it offered. In this vein, Jesus can be seen as an outcast black sheep who was tortured and grossly humiliated. Both embody the hardship of earning freedom from delusion.
Short-term memory is where the rubber of human psychology meets the road.
It is the active part of human psychology as it functions in real-time.
New research indicates that the thalamus, which relays almost all sensory information, is central to the operation of short-term memory. Without the thalamus, short-term memory does not occur.
Short-term memory is a changeable “program” that deals with and responds to the world quickly. It is the main determinant of how “you” are in the moment.
Short-term memory maintains persistent activity (in the brain/body) by relaying its components through the thalamus in response to real-time conditions.
If we discover a mistake in our short-term memory, it is typically very easy to change. For example, if you realize you forgot to set your clocks ahead, your short-term memory will quickly adjust. You might feel a little dumb for a moment, but usually it is no big deal.
This example shows how our short-term memory is connected to long-term memories, to planning, expectation, and our general sense of the world around us and what we are doing in it.
FIML is an effective form of psychotherapy largely because it focuses on the short-term memory.
By targeting short-term memory loads, FIML helps partners discover how their psychologies are actually functioning in real-time during real-world situations.
Correcting mistakes in short-term memory immediately changes how we function.
Changing the same mistake several times very often removes it entirely from the long-term memory, from the overall functioning of the individual.
Buddhist mindfulness practice focuses a lot on short-term memory.
In this respect, FIML is a kind of shared mindfulness between two people, both keeping themselves and each other honest and on the same page.
FIML may feel intense for beginners because this kind of focus with this kind of intention has probably never been engaged in before.
With practice, FIML becomes relaxed and pleasant, creating an in-the-zone feeling like you are playing a fun game or doing something important and interesting together.
When done regularly, FIML generates a very sturdy kind of mutual self-respect. ABN
I say something that sounds bad to you. You query me and I tell you what I meant. You realize that what I meant was not bad at all but actually quite nice. That’s one wrong that you discovered. Then you tell me what you thought you had heard and I realize that the tone I used could all too easily be misinterpreted. That’s one wrong that I discovered. For a total of two wrongs. What we made right is how we understand each other. Since both of us learned something valuable about ourselves and each other, we have actually made more than one right. So two wrongs can make even more than one right.
This is one reason it is good to see how and why you are wrong when doing FIML. You help your partner and you help yourself, and going forward you make it easier to communicate with your partner clearly and with great detail. If we face our wrongs in the right way by using FIML practice, we will learn to take pleasure in being wrong because being wrong about communication hurts both partners, while fixing what was wrong helps both of them.
In the example above, if when you heard the tone of voice that sounded bad to you and you did not make a FIML query, you would have essentially accepted a mistaken interpretation of your partner. In a short time, you would probably forget the incident that led to your forming that mistaken interpretation but the emotions generated by it and the stimulation of deeper associations due to it would now be a thing in your mind. You would have started forming a mistaken impression of your partner. If you had made other prior mistakes about your partner, this one would be added to them. Even though none of your impressions had been correct, they still would snowball in you mind. In contrast, if you had made a FIML query as soon as you heard the tone that sounded bad, you would have seen your mistake and prevented it from snowballing. Thus, you should feel happy to learn you were wrong.
From your partner’s point of view, they too should feel happy because your query has stopped you from misunderstanding them while at the same time showing them that maybe that habitual tone of voice isn’t as good as they thought it was. Additionally, both of you will be able to trust each other even more because you now know you can do that. You can fix small mistakes in real-time as they arise. This skill will allow you to take on many new subjects that may have seemed too complex in the past. And that should make you happy too.
When FIML practice relieves us of mistakes, we can and should feel happy. Many wrongs can lead to many rights if we have the right technique.
Long-term practice of FIML generates deep change in the human psyche.
Social relations, habitual traits and attitudes, as well as ingrained emotional responses may all be subject to profound transformation.
The reason this happens is the basic FIML technique provides consistently good counter-evidence to habitual mental and emotional reactions. In addition, the technique itself teaches the practitioner’s mind–or shows it by example–to apply similar kinds of reasoning to many other situations that are not open to FIML dialog.
The basic FIML technique is a deceptively simple stop-and-query technique designed for use in conversations between close friends or partners. In our How to do FIML post, we have described the basic technique as clearly and simply as we could. This description should work as an effective model for beginning FIML practitioners, but it is a bit like describing in words how to hit a baseball or dive into a pond. The experience of actually doing FIML in a real-life, dynamic, emotionally-charged conversation will draw on a wide variety of skills and emotions from both partners. These aspects of FIML cannot be well-described in words because they will be different for different people and in different situations.
FIML does not tell anyone what to think or feel, but rather provides a method for clarifying thought and feeling as they occur in real life.
FIML practice allows partners to expand their senses of who they are and access these areas through speech. Correctly done, FIML will keep partners from becoming lost in side-issues or emotional traps. FIML gives partners access to a shared meta-perspective that will help them gradually rediscover or redesign how they think of themselves and each other, and how they react in many different kinds of situations.
FIML is like yoga in that it uses no props. Yoga uses the body to exercise the body. FIML uses two minds working together on the basis of shared rules. With practice, FIML partners will find that they are able to leverage or gain access to many areas of themselves that cannot be reached by other means. After several years of practice, partners will discover that they have gained levels of mental and emotional strength and freedom that had been barely imaginable before.
The basic FIML technique depends on partners clearly remembering everything that is/was in their mind(s) at the moment a phrase in question was spoken and/or heard. By honestly comparing the contents of their minds under these circumstances, partners will gain access to the rich realm of secondary and tertiary meanings that accompany all utterances. At the same time, they will free themselves from habitual mistaken interpretations whenever they arise.
Their minds, thus, will gradually gain freedom from error (mental and psychological) while broadening the range of subject matter they are capable of entertaining. And this will have a far-reaching influence on both behavior and perception in many other areas.
Once partners are skilled in the basic FIML technique, they will find that it need not always be done immediately upon noticing an emotional or judgmental reaction. After a few months of successful FIML practice, partners will probably find that they can bring up events from hours before and both will still have a reasonably accurate memory of what was said and heard.
It is important not to jump to this level too quickly, though, because if the basic technique has not been mastered, partners will lose sight of the meta-perspective, without which deep understanding and transformation will not be possible. Experienced partners will know when they have good data and can proceed with a FIML dialog and when they don’t. If you don’t have good data (both partners remember exactly what was said and what they were thinking), don’t do a FIML dialog. Just drop the subject. Though retain the general sense of something having happened because the subject will almost certainly come up again. When that happens, try to get good data you both agree on and then proceed with a FIML dialog.
A physicist has proposed a radical new theory of consciousness – and it could finally explain what happens when you die.
Consciousness does not emerge from human brains, according to Professor Maria Strømme, a professor of nanotechnology at Uppsala University.
Instead, she claims that it exists as a fundamental field.
If this is correct, ‘mysterious’ phenomena such as telepathy, near–death experiences, and even life after death could finally be explained by science.
According to Professor Strømme’s theory, consciousness does not end when we die.
Instead, when a person passes away, their consciousness simply returns to the background field.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Professor Strømme explained: ‘The possibility that consciousness is fundamental has been under–explored. But that is changing rapidly.
‘We are reaching a point where asking deeper questions about consciousness is not philosophy on the margins — it is becoming a scientific necessity.’
This is not a new theory in the modern world or the ancient.
This is what many thinkers are saying today and what Mind-Only Buddhism has always been saying.
The vocabularies available today—quantum fields, localization, non-local—allow us to make descriptions of consciousness sharper for the modern mind.
Buddhist samadhi states (meditative states) may be thought of as the realization of the underlying quantum field of universal consciousness, or immersion of individual consciousness in that field or fields.
I personally think something like this is the actual structure of reality and why it is so important to live morally and have clear and honest mind.
I hope more understanding of human life along these lines, whether they are called Buddhist or not, will end human tribalism and the absurd values and beliefs that support it. ABN
American Buddhist Net 