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

by Chris Niebauer

It's as if contemporary neuroscience and psychology are just now catching up with what Buddhist, Taoist, and Advaita Vedanta Hinduism have been teaching for over 2,500 years.

Your illusionary self—the voice in your head—is very convincing. It narrates the world, determines your beliefs, replays your memories, identifies with your physical body, manufactures your projections of what might happen in the future, and creates your judgments about the past.

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.”

What we discuss here will show that specific studies in neuroscience and psychology strongly suggest what Eastern philosophies have been saying for millennia: namely that this idea of “me” or the “self” that most of us take for granted doesn't exist in the way that we think it does.

Dr. V. S. Ramachandran, one of the most innovative neuroscientists of the twentieth century, shared a theory of the left brain that is very similar to Gazzaniga's. After conducting his own experiments, 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.

The big difference between the Eastern spiritual traditions and psychology is that the former has recognized this experientially and the latter did so experimentally (and accidentally, for that matter). And this means that those who study and teach psychology are still largely unable to appreciate what it means to experience the interpreter as a fiction.

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.

In my opinion, 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.

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.

I invite you to spend a few minutes and really think about the merits of the opposite position of one of your most cherished beliefs, as this is a good way to see it for what it is: a thought that exists in your left brain only.

Research has shown that in dyslexics across many world languages, the left hemisphere is both smaller (compared to non-dyslexic controls) and also has areas that vary from the “norm.”3

To be clear, saying the self is an illusion doesn't mean that it doesn't exist at all, but rather that it's akin to a mirage in the middle of the desert. The vision of the oasis is real, but the oasis itself isn't. In this same way, the image of the self is real, but when we look at the image, we find it is simply that, an image and nothing more. The image of both, the oasis and the self, is really just another idea or thought and only there the moment it is being thought of.

As a reminder, when I say we suffer, in this context I mean we generate thoughts and feelings of sadness, disappointment, grief, what have you, as we reject one imaginary version of ourselves in favor of another. This is simply the left brain doing its thing and nothing more. When we identify entirely with the left brain and believe that it's us, however, the suffering can be overwhelming.

The trick is to become less identified with your thoughts, to not take them so seriously, to see them as “happenings” rather than “the way things really are.”

In my view, believing that the left-brain interpreter is “you” is akin to looking at the night sky and believing the constellation Orion is really out there as an entity, rather than a group of stars seen from a particular angle, which the mind has made into a pattern and labeled. While it may initially sound a little depressing to know that nothing is real in the way we might think it is, you may find a sense of relief in this—like putting down a heavy sack you've been taught to carry your whole life.

Another way to think of the fictional self or ego is that its addiction to interpreting works like a drug. Every day it needs to get its fix, and it does that in a variety of ways: telling stories about what it perceives, comparing and categorizing itself again others, judging things as right or wrong—and it uses all of these processes to define “you” as “yourself.”

As you can see by now, a vast array of problems can come out of this thinking. Rather than embrace reality as it is, the left brain is hopelessly addicted to storytelling and interpretations about reality, which provide a short-term hit of purpose and meaning but an inevitable c...

In the 1970s, psychology introduced a theory called “levels of processing,” but it could very well be called “levels of meaning.”3 The theory was very simple: if you process the meaning, you will remember it, but if you process only the surface features by just reading it to yourself or looking at the words, it will be forgotten.

Frankl believed that it is “the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.” Meanwhile, psychology—and much of culture—has been on a pursuit of happiness crusade for at least the last thirty years. However, the current research is backing up Frankl's insights.

Unlike the verbal silence that is going on in the right brain, the vast majority of happenings in the left side are ideas about other ideas, or ideas about ideas about ideas, in a sort of self-generated bureaucratic machine. Of course, these stories and interpretations are all abstractions, so one could say that what is going on in the left brain is countless images reflected in water with no substance. Or, as a Zen Buddhist might say, “the mind is like water.”

I will bet that you will not find her responsible at all, and it turns out that your right brain is critical in making this judgment. There is a section of the right brain called the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) that does nothing else except to think about other people's perspective. Saxe's research found that the more people can relate to the mind of Grace and understand that from her perspective she was innocent, the more active the RTPJ was. Alternately, when a magnetic pulse was applied to the RTPJ to disrupt its function, subjects were less able to consider the mind of Grace. As it turns out, the RTPJ isn't fully developed in kids, and they have a difficult time seeing things from others' point of view until this area matures. Anyone who has spent time around young children can attest to this, as it's virtually impossible for a two- or three-year-old to relate to the needs of his or her peers when it comes to sharing a coveted toy. Mythologist Joseph Campbell said this about compassion: “When real trouble comes, your humanity is awakened.” Consider that many of us will run into a burning building to save a total stranger without a second thought, which is illogical to the left-brain interpreter. Like it or not, our true self is more compassionate than the left brain can ever admit. Bringing the left brain's desire to be master into balance allows for extraordinary compassion and interconnection with others.