David Eagleman for Buddha

In the "No Self" topic, Chris pointed to a New Yorker article about the neuroscientist David Eagleman:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/25/110425fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=all

The article gave my head a spin, and I went out and bought his two books. One, called "Sum", is a cool little exploration of various afterlife scenarios. I'll talk about my favourite one later. But the real gem is his book "Incognito", which is a cutting-edge description of the way scientists think the brain works. I hesitated posting this until I finished the book and, indeed, I am only less than a quarter of the way through, but already I am having a lot of real shake-ups to the way I look at the world.

Chris, you need to read this book now!

What is blowing me away right out of the gate are the details he is presenting on the way researchers are now seeing how the brain interprets -- yes, I mean interpret -- inputs from the various senses. It is fascinating to see how they can demonstrate how fuzzy our "reality" is, even our sense of time. Scary fascinating. There is the eye trick mentioned in the New Yorker article as an example of how the brain fills in missing time or, more properly, edits what you perceive. There is another example in the book of how they train a person's brain to accept a 10ms delay between pressing a button and flashing a light as simultaneous so that, when they remove the delay, the person perceives the light flashing *before* they press the button.

I often rail at the notion that nothing exists until we perceive it. I still think that is nuts. But I am now fully on board that absolutely nothing we perceive is actually the way things are. Our consciousness is just a passenger on the Chris Angel Mindfreak tour bus.

Tomo, I just bought the Kindle version of Eagleman's "Incognito" to read on my iPad. Thank you for the recommendation, man!

So, I have finished the book and by the end I was getting a bit weary. One whole chapter had way too much of a "personal agenda" feel to it. But between all that I was truly blown away by what the brain does, both when it is "working" and when it is malfunctioning.

I will probably read it again, at least the first few chapters, because they were the most "wow" inducing in terms of what your brain does for you without you realizing it, and I think those are the most relevant to members here. The major takeaway that he repeats over and over again is that our "consciousness" is such a small part of what the brain does, and that makes me think of "self", "witness", and all the other buzzwords we are familiar with, and what are we really doing when we "awaken".

He talks about stuff your brain does so autonomously that it is "burned into the circuitry", so it runs without any intervention by "you" and, indeed, without you being able to see it anymore. When we sit, are we somehow getting down to these circuits and seeing them again for the first time, as it were?

Fascinating stuff.

Tomo, I just bought the Kindle version of Eagleman's "Incognito" to read on my iPad. Thank you for the recommendation, man!

-cmarti

You can do that??? I was bummed that I could not get the iBooks version so I bought it hardcover.

Yes, you can do that. The Kindle app for iPad and iPhone is free. The ebooks, not so much.

Cool, thanks. I have it installed now. Annoyingly, there is a copyright issue and not all titles are available in Canada, said "Incognito" being one of them.

Ugh.

I'm in the middle of reading Eagleman's book Incognito and I have to say that it's really making me think about how practice and awakening work or, better, what awakening really means. If he's right and the mind/brain is an assembly of many, many sort of interconnected processes all doing their own thing all the time, and mind/brains build models of reality that are used at all times to unconsciously navigate life as much as possible, and awareness is the result of experiencing the unexpected that violates what the models predict, well then... wow.

Wait."awareness" -- is what happens when something that seems new or not previously expected appears?

-michaelmonson

What Eagleman suggests is that you only really notice something when it does not fit what your brain expected to happen. That is what enables you to drive to work, for example, without really noticing the moment-to-moment things that you do to drive. You just do it because it is now an automatic process. But if something happens that was not expected, then you are suddenly aware of it.

I'm not sure how on point this is, but ever since the first Egilman discussion and then through other similar discussions and listening to podcasts, etc. I've been noticing a sort of "fill-in" process that I do. Know what I mean?I'm seeing that my senses (mostly hearing and sight I guess) will get just a little bit of info about where I am and what I am seeing and hearing and then fill in the rest based upon memory, convenience, habit. The actual perception before the fill in can be very narrow and the "fillng in" can be quite extensive, and, subsequently, quite fictional. I've noticed that I'll actually hear someone say something, register it as one thing and then kind of revisit what I heard and realize that something quite different had been said.

...

-michaelmonson

This is a very central point in "Incognito".

"But chris, please finish your sentence! Then what?:

Eagleman's Incognito thesis basically documents what I have learned in my practice. There are an almost endless series of processes going on all the time that comprise the varying and illusory sense of a "governing self" (or self sense) that arises from time to time.

Building reliable models of our environment is a major component of what mind does. I can recall having this insight several times early in my vipassana practice. I can still watch that process occur in real time.

These things all contribute to the experience of emptiness, which now appears to me to have a real neurological underpinning. Things appear solid and permanent when we believe them to be solid and permanent. We're wired to believe the models our minds create - and why wouldn't we be?

Meditation, and I'm sure various other forms of introspection, allow us to slowly uncover these processes and become less and less credulous as they play out in our heads, leading to a very different way to perceive experience. So what was solid and permanent becomes very obviously empty and momentary.

This book creates a wonderful synergy between science and practice

Another thing that becomes clear in practice and that is validated by neuroscience is that our conscious awareness doesn't actually live in the now. What we're actually aware of is assembled from the many parts that are running below the level of consciousness, some rising into awareness, some not. There's a delay required to assemble the story we do live in, like the seven second delay on television although not that long.

And we are absolute masters at creating stories that rationalize why we do things we actually have no control over at all, things that are reflexive or innate and instinctual, or just happen so fast that they aren't processed in consciousness, like hitting a baseball. Of course, we tend to believe the stories we make up to explain these things.

Again, practicing diligently slowly brings this weird truth into awareness so we start to suspect there's a lot more going on than we thought, or maybe less, or something very different.

There are things that Eagleman says are not instinctual and happen only in conscious awareness. Things like doing higher math, planning ahead, budgeting your finances. It seems that conscious thinking is good at those things, at coordinating and insuring that all those underlying processes don't conflict too much.

I'm not sure about the similarities between "causes and conditions" and the society of mind that Eagleman asserts. I need to think about it a lot more but at first blush, yeah, seems like they may be the same thing, sort of, if we include the stimuli that we're reacting to.

Ona, the theme of Incognito could accurately be stated as "people tend to think they're more special than they are" as that comes across in waves as I read the book. Again, this book is reinforcing my own realizations and biases in a major way.

Here's my takeaway, for now, from this book --

It all happens on its own. I'm not driving. I may not even be in the car most of the time as this "I" that was assumed to be permanent isn't. In fact, there are many, many "I's" going on all the time. The world appears dreamlike because it IS dreamlike - it's made up in mind about a half second after it actually happens.

So relax and let it flow.

It's like waking up

Mike, you will always have things about you that are truly unique:

1. Your memories (which also serve as filters, by the way)
2. Your perspective in space and time, which no one else can share, ever, as it depends on where and when your body and mind are
3. Your body sensations and most of the data streaming in from your other senses, as no one else can ever share that

You are anchored in these things. You cannot avoid them, ever, until you're dead.These are powerful things that assist the mind created illusion of the sense of self. These things really are true. right? This is why the illusion is so difficult to see.