No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to Buddhism

by Chris Niebauer

Mistaking the voice in our head for a thing and labeling it “me” brings us into conflict with the neuropsychological evidence that shows there is no such thing. This mistake—this illusory sense of self—is the primary cause of our mental suffering. What's more, I contend that it blocks access to the eternal, expansive thread of universal consciousness that is always available to us.

“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself—and there isn't one.”

Ramachandran found that the left brain's role is one of beliefs and interpretation and that it had little regard for reality in making up its interpretations.

Over the last forty years, several additional studies have shown that the left side of the brain excels at creating an explanation for what's going on, even if it isn't correct. The truth is that your left brain has been interpreting reality for you your whole life, and if you are like most people, you have never understood the full implications of this.

Misattributed arousal is the idea that when our nervous system is stimulated or excited—when our blood pressure goes up and our heart beats faster—the left-brain interpreter will make up a story about the origin of this arousal, and often that story is completely wrong. In exactly the same way that the left brain of a split-brain subject creates a theory to explain reality (“you need a shovel for the chicken coop”), these studies have demonstrated that even people who still have intact communication between the two hemispheres create erroneous stories when it comes to unexplained arousal. That is to say that arousal and passion—among other intense emotions—can quickly overcome our ability to reason, leaving our left-brain interpreter free to make up a story that it believes is a solid fit.

strongly suggest that we live our lives under the direction of the interpreter, and for most of us the mind is a master we are not even aware of. We may become angry, offended, sexually aroused, happy, or fearful, and we do not question the authenticity of these thoughts and experiences. While it is clear that these experiences are happening to us, we somehow retain the idea that we are still in charge of it all.

“I made an assumption,” but this explanation fails on two counts. The first is that the interpretive mind is constantly making interpretations without a full account of the facts and

it believes these interpretations to be true, much of the time without doubting its conclusion. When an interpretation is later revealed to be not true, the interpretive mind sometimes labels it a mistake, but based on the findings of these early experiments, it's safe to say that many of these interpreted mistakes go unrealized and we never know it.

The second thing that is overlooked in the explanation “I made an assumption” is the presumption of “I.” In these experiments, the “I” that makes an assumption is really just the interpretive portion of the mind. We have already seen that this “I” can be wrong about so many things in the “outside” world, so is it possible then that the “I” is even wrong about the interpretation of itself?

Our association of our true self with the constant voice in our head is an instance of mistaking the map (the voice) for the territory (who we really are). This error is one of the biggest reasons the illusion of self is so difficult to see.

when you mistake the voice in your head for who you really are, the tool is using you. Language creates a story, and this story—combined with our memories and the sense of a command center behind our forehead—creates an illusion of self that virtually everyone on the planet identifies with. In the same way that we mistake words for what they represent, we also use our linguistics-based thoughts as the basis for a fictional self as a genuine self.

The root of the problem is that many of us do not see language as a representation of reality, but confuse it with reality itself.

Exactly where along the continuum of temperature does cold become hot? When do you get offended? When does good become evil? When does something become a catastrophe? A failure? When does being poor become being rich? When does happiness become sadness? Where do you draw the line for any and all of these? Recognizing this has immense practical benefits. Simply becoming aware of the interpreter and the endless categories it creates through judgment frees you from being tied to the inevitability of these judgments. That is to say, when you become conscious of the interpreter, you are free to choose to no longer take its interpretations so seriously. In other words, when you realize that everyone's brain is constantly interpreting, in ways that are subjective and often inaccurate or completely incorrect, you might find yourself able to grasp this as “just my opinion” or “the way I see it” rather than “this is the way it is.” You begin to see your judgments as simply a different line in the sand than others. When someone approaches you with a “this is the way it is” attitude, you can appreciate that this person is dominated by the left brain, that they are a servant to its master. As a result, there is no need to take their actions or attitudes personally; it's a biological function that they have not yet recognized. This small perspective shift is enough to change how we live with each other and ourselves. Furthermore, when you become aware that the left brain is just doing i...

This is a perfect example of the interpreter spending time trying to find a pattern for a story that doesn't exist.

By seeing patterns that are not there, the mind creates stories that aren't true, and as we've previously discussed, this can lead to unnecessary suffering, anxiety, and depression.

The tendency of the self to defend its own image through more thinking is a hallmark of understanding in Buddhism. Experienced meditators describe how in meditation, as the mind begins to still and the voice in the head speaks less frequently, there is often a rush of thoughts that are most important to sustaining the self-image. This is how meditators can notice what mental stories and thought patterns are their most prevalent preoccupations, as the mind reverts to replaying these topics as a defense against slowing down.

Some Eastern teachers explain that the mind “keeps talking” in this way because it's the only way it can exist.

This is consistent with my view that the self is more like a verb than a noun. It only exists when we think it does, because ...

Mindfulness in this context is defined as being fully in the present moment, observing what is happening in the world around you along with the world inside you—your thoughts, feelings, sensations. Practitioners are often taught to watch the machinations of the mind without attaching too much importance to them in the form of a judgment—which, if you remember, is one strength of the left brain. Mindfulness teachers explain that when a thought arises, one can notice it rather than attaching to it, bringing one's attention back to the present moment rather than following that thought chain into a story about reality. The practice of mindfulness is about being in and observing reality rather than thinking about reality—like being a watcher of events in the present, both inside and outside. This begs the question, who is doing the watching? Could it be the right-brain consciousness? We will return to this question, but in the meantime we can see that practicing mindfulness is a way of being in the world that lessens your identification with the left-brain interpreter. Because our interpreter is so constant, we have to practice being mindful.

Perhaps this is why the ancient Eastern philosophers valued nonlinguistic consciousness to a degree that is difficult for the modern Westerners to appreciate. Again, neuropsychology is catching up to this, but it hasn't exactly gotten there yet. Consider the following quote from the Advaita Vedanta master Nisargadatta Maharaj: “In your world, the unspoken has no existence. In mine the words and their contents have no being. . . . My world is real, while yours is made of dreams.” To live in a world of abstractions—based on language, concepts, beliefs, patterns, labels—is to live in a dream world rather than reality. One of the primary teachings of Zen Buddhism is to bring your consciousness back to reality, saving it from being lost in the world of the abstract. When my class gets too lost in one abstraction after another, I will clap my hands together making a noise loud enough to startle students sleeping in the back. I remind them that at that point, for the moment they were startled by the clap, they were awake without thought: that is Zen. At my son's soccer match, I found myself in a conversation with another soccer dad about how stressful work was at the time. I tried to explain that most stress is the result of taking fictitious stories too seriously, but he was having a hard time separating the story (left-brain interpreting) from the reality (right-brain witnessing). So, I pointed to the soccer field and reminded him that there was no soccer championship going on ...

Frankl believed that it is “the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.”

Buddha explained how desire leads to suffering; this seems to also hold even for the desire to be happy.

In Zen, there is no such thing as a wrong emotion, and therefore nothing to strive for or fight against. My students know very well not to tell me to “have a nice day” because there is nothing wrong with a bad day or a bad mood.

During a now famous lecture, the Eastern philosopher and spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti asked the audience “Do you want to know what my secret is?” According to several accounts of this story, in a soft voice, he said, “I don't mind what happens.” In the absolute acceptance of all emotions, they no longer have control over you because you have given up trying to control them. Perhaps a more accurate way to say this is that the interpretive mind has given up trying to control emotions, and in this way it is no longer attempting to be master.

Next, consider this. What if the way to “win” the game of life is to discover experientially that it's all a game in the first place and that you are the creator of the game? I emphasize the experience of this discovery, and I suggest that this is what happened to the Buddha, Laotzu, and other ancient masters from the East so long ago. In their case, identification with the self collapsed, and so did all the mental suffering that went with it.