Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

GARY: Yet, I see what you are saying about harm arising from these same instinctual passions. I am having a hard time reconciling these things. Can you comment?

RICHARD: The instinctual passions are – more or less – all that animals have to operate and function with ... and one can presume (it cannot be known as a fact) that the instinctual passions were equally essential for proto-human beings (humanoids) before intelligence evolved with the advent of the ability to think, reflect, plan and implement considered action for beneficial results (no other animal can do this). All peoples alive today are the end result of the ‘success story’ of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire ... if it were not for these survival instincts we would not be here. Yet these very survival instincts are the biggest threat to human survival today ... the greatest danger these days is no longer the ‘wild animals’ or ‘savage beasts’ of yore ... it is fellow human beings. The dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 and the world-wide accessibility to both chemical and biological warfare weapons brought home to all but the most recalcitrant the stunning fact that people are their own worst enemy.

It is high time for radical unilateral action.

RESPONDENT: I have heard you make a distinction between the instincts and the instinctual passions ...

RICHARD: As the words ‘instincts’ and ‘instinctual survival mechanism’ my co-respondent was using covers a wide range of innate behaviours – heritable traits such as the display movements of birds (as in peacocks for instance), or the web-spinning actions of spiders, the burrowing habits of marine worms, the prey-catching techniques of weasels or wolves, the food-hoarding activity of squirrels, the browsing methods of antelope, birds flying north (or south) for winter, river eels travelling thousands of kilometres out into the ocean to spawn and the feelings finding their own way back to the self-same river, and so on – it seemed necessary to point out, for clarity in communication, that I was referring to the instinctual survival passions in particular, the genetically-encoded affective feelings, and not the instincts in general.

RESPONDENT: ... and here above you are saying that the instinctual passions are pumping freeze-fight-flee chemicals through the body. Do the instinctual passions arise from the instincts?

RICHARD: No, they are biologically inherited just as all the other instincts are ... and although there is no absolute consensus among biologists and their ilk, as to what feelings are primary and what feelings are cultivated derivations, wherever I have listened to, read about, or watched professionals in this field discussing the issue, at least four basic passions cropped up again and again: the feelings of fear and aggression and nurture and desire.

RESPONDENT: Are they connected?

RICHARD: Not necessarily ... although a great many instinctual actions are infused with, if not motivated by, the instinctual passions.

RESPONDENT: How does this work?

RICHARD: A readily observable instinctive reaction in oneself, that is not necessarily affective, is the automatic response known as the reflex action (inadvertently touch a hotplate, for instance, and there is an involuntary jerking away of the affected limb) or the startle response.

A classic example of this occurred whilst strolling along a country lane one fine morning with the sunlight dancing its magic on the glistening dew-drops suspended from the greenery everywhere; these eyes are delighting in the profusion of colour and texture and form as the panorama unfolds; these ears are revelling in the cadence of tones as their resonance and timbre fills the air; these nostrils are rejoicing in the abundance of aromas and scents drifting fragrantly all about; this skin is savouring the touch, the caress, of the early springtime ambience; this mind, other than the sheer enjoyment and appreciation of being alive as this flesh and blood body, is ambling along in neutral – there is no thought at all and conscious alertness is null and void – when all-of-a-sudden the easy gait has ceased happening.

These eyes instantly shift from admiring the dun-coloured cows in a field nearby and are looking downward to the front and see the green and black snake, coiling up on the road in readiness to act, which had not only occasioned the abrupt halt but, it is discovered, had initiated a rapid step backwards ... an instinctive response which, had the instinctual passions that are the identity been in situ, could very well have triggered off freeze-fight-flee chemicals.

There is no perturbation whatsoever (no wide-eyed staring, no increase in heart-beat, no rapid breathing, no adrenaline-tensed muscle tone, no sweaty palms, no blood draining from the face, and so on) as with the complete absence of the rudimentary animal ‘self’ in the primordial brain the limbic system in general, and the amygdala in particular, have been free to do their job – the oh-so-vital startle response – both efficaciously and cleanly.

Cattle, for example, are easily ‘spooked’ by a reptile and have been known to stampede in infectious group panic.

RESPONDENT: My view of this is that the mind directs the body and something behind the mind directs the mind.

RICHARD: Yes ... for 6.0 billion people this ‘something behind the mind’ is their genetic identity (‘being’) echoing through the millennia via the germ cells (the spermatozoa and the ova).

RESPONDENT: How can an identity be genetic? A body can be genetic ... not an identity.

RICHARD: Any metaphysical identity (a psychological, emotional, psychic or autological ‘being’) is an epiphenomenon of the rudimentary animal ‘self’ that forms itself, out of survival necessity, as the centre-point of the instinctual passions that blind nature genetically encodes in all sentient beings at conception in the genes ... ‘I’ am the current end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s instinctual passions such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire.

Being born of the biologically inherited instinctual passions genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically speaking – umpteen tens of thousands of years old ... ‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. ‘I’ am so anciently old that ‘I’ may well have always existed ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future. In other words: ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’; ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’; ‘I’ am nurture and nurture is ‘me’; ‘I’ am desire and desire is ‘me’ and so on. This is one’s ‘Original Face’ (to use the Zen terminology); this is the source of the ‘we are all one’ feeling that is accessed in spiritual practices and mystical mediation.

Because, genetically speaking we are indeed ‘all one’ inasmuch as all carbon based life-forms – not just sentient life-forms – have a common hereditary ‘survival instincts’ origin.

RESPONDENT: You wrote [Richard[: ‘An actual freedom from the human condition is a freedom from the instinctual passions – not the instincts per se’. [endquote]. I am asking you without their passions, exist any more instincts?

RICHARD: One example of an instinctive reaction in oneself, that is not necessarily affective, is the automatic response known as the reflex action (inadvertently touch a hotplate, for instance, and there is an involuntary jerking away of the affected limb) or the startle response.

A classic example of this occurred whilst strolling along a country lane one fine morning with the sunlight dancing its magic on the glistening dew-drops suspended from the greenery everywhere; these eyes are delighting in the profusion of colour and texture and form as the panorama unfolds; these ears are revelling in the cadence of tones as their resonance and timbre fills the air; these nostrils are rejoicing in the abundance of aromas and scents drifting fragrantly all about; this skin is savouring the touch, the caress, of the early springtime ambience; this mind, other than the sheer enjoyment and appreciation of being alive as this flesh and blood body, is ambling along in neutral – there is no thought at all and conscious alertness is null and void – when all-of-a-sudden the easy gait has ceased happening.

These eyes instantly shift from admiring the dun-coloured cows in a field nearby and are looking downward to the front and see the green and black snake, coiling up on the road in readiness to act, which had not only occasioned the abrupt halt but, it is discovered, had initiated a rapid step backwards ... an instinctive response which, had the instinctual passions that are the identity been in situ, could very well have triggered off freeze-fight-flee chemicals.

There is no perturbation whatsoever (no wide-eyed staring, no increase in heart-beat, no rapid breathing, no adrenaline-tensed muscle tone, no sweaty palms, no blood draining from the face, no dry mouth, no cortisol-induced heightened awareness, and so on) as with the complete absence of the rudimentary animal ‘self’ in the brain-stem the limbic system in general, and the amygdala in particular, have been free to do their job – the oh-so-vital startle response – both efficaciously and cleanly.

Cattle, for example, are easily ‘spooked’ by a reptile and have been known to stampede in infectious group panic.

RICHARD: It is not thought that imputes a thinker. It is the passion engendered by the instinctual self in the reptilian brain that remains the real culprit.

RESPONDENT No. 22: It seems that passions or feelings are just changing phenomenon that seemingly arise and pass away in awareness just as thoughts. To label that ever-changing phenomenon as an instinctual self seems to be the addition of thought.

RESPONDENT: Richard, I agree with the above. To me you are very clear until you get to this instinct part – to me it’s fuzzy. Can you clarify?

RICHARD: I most certainly can ... it is rather simple, actually. But what is required is that one first acknowledges that this physical body and this physical world and this physical universe are actual. Actual as in tangible, corporeal, material, substantial, palpable. It requires that one comes to one’s senses – both figuratively and literally – and cease trying to understand life, the universe and what it is to be a human being through religious or spiritual eyes. This is not a metaphysical matter ... it is very, very earthy.

Those people, who have dedicated large parts of their waking hours devoted to the particular type of physical research that painstakingly looks into these matters, have located at least four basic emotions in what is variously called the ‘primitive brain’ or the ‘lizard brain’ or the ‘reptilian brain’, which is located at the top of the brain-stem of all sentient creatures. This is regardless of whether the creature has a developed ‘bigger brain’ – like the human cerebral cortex – over the top of it or not. These basic passions are fear and aggression and nurture and desire ... there are more but scientists tend to disagree about matters scientific according to what school or discipline they are working in. After all, they are fallible, ego-ridden and soul-bound human beings trapped in the human condition like everybody else, and are seeking to find a way through all this mess that we humans are born into via the scientific method.

Experiments with electronic probes on either reptiles – not having a bigger brain – or mammals – having a bigger brain – have demonstrated repeatedly that by touching various locatable areas of this ‘reptilian brain’, these emotions can be triggered at command. Thus the hapless animal will switch from trembling fear to rabid desire in the twinkling of an eye ... merely by applying the electrode to another area. Similarly, nurturing can be abruptly replaced by aggression ... again by moving the electrode. This has been demonstrated again and again with predictable results. Thus it is a fact.

So, beginning with a fact and not a premise, we can reliably ascertain that these instincts are what we are born with. Consequently, all sentient beings have, at the very least, a rudimentary sense of ‘self’ and ‘other’ ... and I am not suggesting for a moment that any reptile or mammal has an ‘I’ or a ‘me’. I mean it in the sense that an animal displays behaviour that indicates that there is an awareness of its physical form as being separate from the form of the world about ... which a tree, for example, does not display. This has been tested with monkeys, for instance, where a mirror is placed in the cage and the monkey first looks behind the mirror to find the – apparently there – ‘other’ monkey. After a while, an understanding that is observable dawns upon the luckless creature ... and it starts pulling faces at itself and otherwise enjoying the clearly demonstrable fun that comes as a result of the monkey knowing that it is its own reflection it is looking at. In other words: a sense of self.

With the hormonal power of the feelings engendered, one feels that a ‘me’ exists ... generally felt to be somewhere in the region of the heart. This is the ‘me’ that I consistently call the soul ... for convenience. This feeling – and feelings are so powerful that they can override intelligence – makes one think that an ‘I’ exists ... generally located in the head. This ‘I’, which for convenience I consistently call the ego, comes to realise that it is the spanner in the works when it comes to the ever-pressing matter of peaceful co-existence with other members of its species. ‘I’, realising (thinking) that ‘I’ am but an illusion in the mind, realise (feel) that ‘my’ true identity is to be found in those prior existent feelings (Zen Buddhism’s ‘Original Face’) and can, by dint of great endeavour, dissolve and become ‘Me’.

This ‘Me’ – usually capitalised to indicate divinity – experiences an oceanic feeling of oneness and unity with all of creation. This gives rise to the popular notion in the East: ‘I am everything and everything is Me’. The West has something similar: ‘I am That I am’ ... but this appellation is reserved for ‘God Men’ who are conveniently long-dead. Prior to the recent influx of Eastern Philosophy, if one realised that ‘I am God’, one would have been institutionalised ... and, to some degree, rightly so. One has stepped out of an illusion, only to wind up living in a delusion. However, the trouble with people who discard the god of Christianity is that they do not realise that by turning to the Eastern spirituality they have effectively jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Eastern spirituality is religion ... merely in a different form to what people in the West have been raised to believe in. Eastern philosophy sounds so convincing to the Western mind that is desperately looking for answers. The Christian conditioning actually sets up the situation for a thinking person to be susceptible to the esoteric doctrines of the East.

It is sobering to realise that the intelligentsia of the West are eagerly following the East down the slippery slope of striving to attain to a self-seeking Divine Immortality ... to the detriment of life on earth. ‘Centre-less Being’, for example, is simply the Eastern term for ‘God’; thus any wisdom designated ‘Unitary Awareness’ translates easily as ‘God’s Word’ ... in Western terminology. At the end of the line there is always a god of some description, lurking in disguise, wreaking its havoc with its ‘Teachings’. Have you ever been to India to see for yourself the results of what they claim are tens of thousands of years of devotional spiritual living? I have, and it is hideous. If it were not for the appalling suffering engendered it would all be highly amusing.

Of course, it is possible to be actually free of the human condition ... but it is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the ‘tried and true’.

RESPONDENT: There are 4 brains in the human body: intellectual, emotional, motor and instinctive. Why are the all emotional and instinctive brains’ functions considered as ‘unuseful’ and the others (thinking and moving) as useful? It’s a point I don’t understand.

RICHARD: ‘As all I am pointing the finger at is the instinctual passions and the intuitive ‘presence’ they form themselves into – and not the instincts per se – then in your ‘4 brains’ model it is only the ‘emotional brain’ which is the spanner in the works. A readily observable instinctive reaction in oneself, that is not necessarily affective, is the automatic response known as the reflex action (inadvertently touch a hotplate, for instance, and there is an involuntary jerking away of the affected limb) or the startle response.

A classic example of this occurred whilst strolling along a country lane one fine morning with the sunlight dancing its magic on the glistening dew-drops suspended from the greenery everywhere; these eyes are delighting in the profusion of colour and texture and form as the panorama unfolds; these ears are revelling in the cadence of tones as their resonance and timbre fills the air; these nostrils are rejoicing in the abundance of aromas and scents drifting fragrantly all about; this skin is savouring the touch, the caress, of the early springtime ambience; this mind, other than the sheer enjoyment and appreciation of being alive as this flesh and blood body, is ambling along in neutral – there is no thought at all and conscious alertness is null and void – when all-of-a-sudden the easy gait has ceased happening.

These eyes instantly shift from admiring the dun-coloured cows in a field nearby and are looking downward to the front and see the green and black snake, coiling up on the road in readiness to act, which had not only occasioned the abrupt halt but, it is discovered, had initiated a rapid step backwards ... an instinctive response which, had the instinctual passions that are the identity been in situ, could very well have triggered off freeze-fight-flee chemicals.

There is no perturbation whatsoever (no wide-eyed staring, no increase in heart-beat, no rapid breathing, no adrenaline-tensed muscle tone, no sweaty palms, no blood draining from the face, no dry mouth, no cortisol-induced heightened awareness, and so on) as with the complete absence of the rudimentary animal ‘self’ in the primordial brain the limbic system in general, and the amygdala in particular, have been free to do their job – the oh-so-vital startle response – both efficaciously and cleanly.

Cattle, for example, are easily ‘spooked’ by a reptile and have been known to stampede in infectious group panic.

RESPONDENT: If the Self is an instinctive creation, could you send in your understanding of that please?

RICHARD: Yes ... all sentient beings have, to some extent or another, deeply embedded instinctual survival passions that are intrinsic to their very nature. This is easily observable in the ‘higher-order’ animals ... and for the sake of simplicity and consistency I identify these common and basic passions as fear and aggression and nurture and desire. It is a fact of life that basic bodily survival is a kill or be killed situation ... a sentient creature has no choice but to live with a ‘what can I eat/what can eat me’ attitude. It is the fittest that survive: yet ‘survival of the fittest’ does not necessarily mean (as it is popularly misunderstood) that the strongest or most muscular always survive. It means ‘the most fitted to the ever-changing environment’ (those who adapt) get to pass on their genes. The most ‘on the ball’ – adroit or shrewd or sharp or smart or cunning or wily and so on – can defeat the strongest or most muscular from time-to-time ... as is evidenced by the long, slow evolution of intelligence in a rather puny animal devoid of claws, fangs, venom, hooves, horns, fur, feathers and so on.

All peoples alive today are the end result of the ‘success story’ of the instinctual passions of fear and aggression (the savage side) and nurture and desire (the tender side) coupled with an adroit or shrewd or sharp or smart or cunning or wily intelligence ... if it were not for these survival instincts we would not be here having this discussion. Yet these very survival instincts are the biggest threat to human survival today: the greatest danger these days is no longer the ‘wild animals’ or ‘savage beasts’ of yore ... it is fellow human beings. This is because the biological imperative – the instinctual survival passions – still rule the roost and are the root cause of all the ills of humankind. These instinctual passions form a rudimentary self – an emotional entity – situated in the reptilian brain at the top of the brain-stem, in all animals. An awareness of being this self (self-consciousness) is evidenced in only a few animals ... in the chimpanzee, for an example, but not the monkey. The human animal, with the unique ability to know its impending demise has taken the awareness of being this rudimentary self and blown it up all out of proportion into a feeling identity, an affective ‘being’ ... no animal has a ‘me’ as a soul in the heart.

Let alone an ‘I’ as an ego in the head.

RESPONDENT: But if the self is rotten to the core, does that make nature rotten to the core too?

RICHARD: This expression is apt only because, still run by the survival instincts to survive at any cost, the bodily survival traits have come to include the survival of this affective, animal self as well ... now a consciously feeling entity aware of the body’s mortality. This affective ‘self’, whilst not being actual, is passionately real ... sometimes very, very real. The belief in a real ‘feeler’ (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being – ‘me’ as soul – which is ‘being’ itself) and a real ‘thinker’ (‘I’ as ego) is not just another passing thought. It is emotion-backed feverish imagination at work ... calenture. ‘I’ passionately believe in ‘my’ existence ... and will defend ‘myself’ to the death (of ‘my’ body) if it is deemed necessary. All of ‘my’ instincts – the instinctive drive for biological survival – come to the fore when psychologically and psychically threatened, for ‘I’ am confused about ‘my’ presence, confounding ‘my’ survival and the body’s survival.

Thus the genetically inherited passions give rise to malice and sorrow which are intrinsically connected and constitute the contrary and perverse nature of all peoples of all races and all cultures. There is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in everyone ... all humans have a ‘dark side’ (the savage instincts) to their nature and a ‘light side’ (the tender instincts). The battle betwixt ‘good and evil’ has raged down through the centuries and it requires constant vigilance lest evil gets the upper hand. Morals and ethics seek to control the wayward self that lurks deep within the human breast ... and some semblance of what is called ‘peace’ prevails for the main. Where morality and ethicality fails to curb the ‘savage beast’, law and order is maintained ... at the point of a gun.

However, ‘my’ survival being paramount could not be further from the truth, for ‘I’ need play no part any more in perpetuating physical existence (which is the primal purpose of the instinctual animal ‘self’). ‘I’ am no longer necessary at all. In fact, ‘I’ am nowadays a hindrance. With all of ‘my’ beliefs, values, creeds, ethics and other doctrinaire disabilities, ‘I’ am a menace to the body. ‘I’ am ready to die (to allow the body to be killed) for a cause and ‘I’ will willingly sacrifice physical existence for a ‘Noble Ideal’ ... and reap ‘my’ post-mortem reward: immortality.

That is how real ‘I’ am ... which is why both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul must die a real death (but not physically into the grave) to find out the actuality.

RICHARD: To explain: in my investigations into life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are I first started by examining thought, thoughts and thinking ... then very soon moved on to examining feelings (first the emotions and then the deeper feelings). When I dug down into these passions and calentures (into the core of ‘my’ being then into ‘being’ itself) I stumbled across the instincts ... and found the origin of not only the affective faculty but the psyche itself. <SNIP>

RESPONDENT: I snipped the above this because it seems more like a rumination. I appreciate that you do this but it does not speak practically.

RICHARD: Okay ... I make no pretensions whatsoever of being a biologist ... I am a lay-person dabbling in an ad hoc general reading of the subject. It is important to comprehend that I am putting a story together ‘after the event’ so as to throw some light on what happened for me. My experiential sensate-feeling experience (sensation) tells me that it was the brain-stem (reptilian brain) where all the activity took place to free me from the human condition. Those people, who have dedicated themselves to the particular type of research that painstakingly looks into these matters, have located basic emotions in what is variously called the ‘primitive brain’ or the ‘lizard brain’ or the ‘reptilian brain’, which is located at and around the top of the brain-stem of all sentient creatures. This is irregardless of whether the creature has a developed ‘bigger brain’ – like the human cerebral cortex – over the top of it or not. These basic instinctual passions include fear and aggression and nurture and desire (there are more but scientists tend to disagree about matters scientific according to what school or discipline they are working in).

There has been much research into this growing science in these last few years. To take fear as just one example: Mr. Joseph LeDoux (and others) has demonstrated that much of the (non-cognitive) emotional memory is laid down before the infant can think ... let alone comprehend cause and effect. This instinctive reactionary behaviour (which he calls the ‘quick and dirty’ reaction) is blind nature’s survival instinct in action. It can (and has been) observed and documented again and again ... yet he and other commentators predict massive denial from all kinds of people to this scientifically demonstrated data.

I say that the instinctive response can be described ... and that I do describe it. What are people going to do with this person called Richard and his report of his experience? Dismiss him and his report ... along with all those empirical scientific investigators like Mr. Joseph LeDoux? He has demonstrated that the amygdala non-cognitively generates instinctual fear (an instinctual passion) 14 milliseconds before any sensory information gets to the cerebral cortex. This fear response simultaneously releases adrenaline, which floods the body and the cerebral cortex, before thinking begins. Thus the thoughts are fear-filled thoughts ... he has been hot on the trail of empirically finding this cause. Vis.:

• [Mr. Joseph LeDoux]: ‘the brain has multiple memory systems (...) explicit (conscious) memories mediated by the hippocampus and other aspects of the temporal lobe memory system [and] implicit (unconscious) memories mediated by the amygdala and its neural connections. Only by taking these systems apart in the brain have neuroscientists been able to figure out that these are different kinds of memory, rather than one memory with multiple forms of expression (...) it has been possible, through studies of experimental animals, to map out in great detail just how the fear system of the brain works. Although much of the research has involved laboratory rats, there have also been studies of a variety of other mammals. Remarkably, the results in all these species lead to the same conclusion. Learning and responding to stimuli that warn of danger involves neural pathways that send information about the outside world to the amygdala, which determines the significance of the stimulus and triggers emotional responses, like freezing or fleeing, as well changes in the inner workings of the body’s organs and glands. There is also evidence that the amygdala of reptiles and birds has similar functions. The implication of these findings is that early on (perhaps since dinosaurs ruled the earth, or even before) evolution hit upon a way of wiring the brain to produce responses that are likely to keep the organism alive in dangerous situations. The solution was so effective that it has not been messed with much, and works pretty much the same in rats and people, as well as many if not all other vertebrate animals. Evolution seems to have gone with an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ rule when it comes to the fear system of the brain (...) research into the brain mechanisms of fear help us understand why emotional conditions are so hard to control. Neuro-anatomists have shown that the pathways that connect the emotional processing system of fear, the amygdala, with the thinking brain, the neocortex, are not symmetrical – the connections from the cortex to the amygdala are considerably weaker than those from the amygdala to the cortex. This may explain why, once an emotion is aroused, it is so hard for us to turn it off at will’. [endquote]. (‘The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life’; Copyright © Joseph LeDoux 1996; Publisher: Touchstone Books (Reprint edition March 1998); ISBN: 0684836599).

Despite dealing with people’s feelings every day, few therapists can give more than a basic explanation of what exactly instinctual passion is (what neurobiologists call ‘emotion’), and how it influences human functioning. Evolutionary biology plays a strong role in what Mr. Joseph LeDoux calls ‘the emotional brain’, those emotional drives which are inherited from humans’ prehistoric ancestors, such that conscious (explicit) emotional experience can be easily seen as higher-order forms of the sub-conscious survival instinctual (implicit) passions ... if one examines oneself moment-to moment.

One critic of his book ‘The Emotional Brain’ wrote:

• ‘More than any other researcher, LeDoux has put the amygdala two nubbins of neural tissue (one on either side of the brain) – at the center of what he calls the Wheel of Fear. Located near the center of the skull, the amygdala belongs to an archaic part of the brain, a part found in birds and reptiles, often referred to as the ‘limbic system’.

Another critic wrote:

• ‘Joseph LeDoux, a professor at the Center for Neural Science at New York University, has written the most comprehensive examination to date of how systems in the brain work in response to emotions, particularly fear. Among his fascinating findings is the work of amygdala structure within the brain. The amygdala mediates fear and other responses and actually processes information more quickly than other parts of the brain, allowing a rapid response that can save our lives before other parts of the brain have had a chance to react’.

And another:

• ‘LeDoux, a neuroscience researcher, shows that our emotions are generated by separate independent neuro systems which work unconsciously; believe it or not, we do NOT run because we are afraid, but rather we are afraid because we run. He also shows that the emotional systems have a much greater impact on our rational conscious than the rational conscious has on the emotional systems. Passion rules reason. This has tremendous implications for the current thinking in psychology/ psychiatry (although they will be slow to pick up on it). And it explains why man has so much angst, why we don’t learn from history, why man is so brutal’. [endquote].

Mr. Stephen S. Hall wrote in the New York Times, February 28, 1999:

• [quote]: ‘LeDoux is not the only biologist to have homed in on the amygdala. Bruce Kapp of the University of Vermont started by studying one of the signature aspects of fear, changes in heart rate, and worked back to the brain. Beginning in 1979, he focused on the part of the brain stem that controls heart rate in rabbits. Following the nerve filaments like a spent fuse back into the brain, he discovered that these fibers lead to the amygdala. Not only that, they also lead to a small hive of related nerve cells in the amygdala, a bit larger than the head of a pin, known as the central nucleus. What was found to be true in rabbits, and later in rats, now appears to be true in humans as well. The central nucleus is the part of your brain that instantaneously looses the hounds of fear when you hear a loud bang or feel an earthquake. Nerves running out from this little knot of excitation carry the messages that control heart rate, blood pressure, sweating, respiration, freezing, increased jumpiness – all the engines that get revved in a fearful situation. But the wiring doesn’t stop there. Other nerve fibers from the amygdala thread their way back (or ‘project’) into the upper parts of the brain, to regions that control the release of stress hormones (which may play a major role in the reign of irrational fears), to the cortex and to sensory areas’.

Mr. Joseph LeDoux’s laboratory continues to investigate the workings of the brain ... and they maintain a web page that may be worth a visit (although it takes some wading through). Vis.: www.cns.nyu.edu/home/ledoux/

Mr. Daniel Goleman has written:

• [quote]: ‘A view of human nature that ignores the power of emotions is sadly shortsighted. The very name ‘Homo Sapiens’, the thinking species, is misleading in light of the new appreciation and vision of the place of emotion in our lives that science now offers. As we all know from experience, when it comes to shaping our decisions and our actions, feeling counts every bit as much – and often more – than thought. We have gone too far in emphasising the value and import of the purely rational – of what IQ measures – in human life. Intelligence can come to nothing when the emotions hold sway’. (‘Emotional Intelligence’ Copyright © 1995 by Daniel Goleman; Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2 Soho Square, London W1V 6HB; ISBN 0 7475 2803 6).

This is a clear statement of fact: ‘Intelligence can come to nothing when the emotions hold sway’ . There is a wealth of information both in print and on the Internet ... which all reinforces what I have been experiencing myself for many years now: the passionate memory of all emotional hurts (indeed all the affections) was extinguished when the passionate memory faculty itself was extirpated ... the intellectual memory operates with the clarity enabled by the absence of the instinctual passions which normally cloud the remembrance with attractions and repulsions; likes and dislikes; shoulds and should nots and so on. In other words: free of malice and sorrow.

To recap: the brain has two ‘memory banks’ and the passionate memory is both non-conscious and primal. This primal memory faculty (so far located mainly in the amygdala) mediates all sensory data and triggers hormonal secretions before such data reaches the intellectual memory faculty (located mainly in the neo-cortex). Consequently, as the neo-cortex is suffused with hormonal secretions a split-second before thinking commences, all thought is tainted, polluted ... crippled by the affective faculty before it starts. This has been empirically detected and exhaustively verified by the recent technological experimentation and research into the passions (for just one example the passion of fear was partly explained above).

Thus modern empirical science has put the kibosh on ‘ancient wisdom’ once and for all.

Humankind is poised on the cusp of the dawning of a fresh era; an era wherein an evolution in the brain-stem is beginning to happen. The seat of the instincts, tentatively located in the popularly named ‘reptilian brain’, is capable of undergoing a mutation. No longer will blind nature have to operate; the perpetuation of the species will become a matter of lucid thought and personal choice. No longer will vicious wars of group survival be necessary. Already, with the advent of mutually assured destruction because of chemical, biological and nuclear capability, people are questioning the advisability of war as a means of settling disputes. The apprehension of a cataclysmic end to human life has shaken the habitual and apathetic ‘human’ complacency to such an extent that the mind is now ready to be receptive to something entirely new in human history.

I do consider that these are exhilarating times to be living in.

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