Hey, settle down over there

The particular organization of the brain is to account for why we engage in wars and murder, and why we draw nearer to spiritual enlightenment too

by Michael Nenonen <mnenonen@republic-news.org>

The Dalai Lama's visit to Vancouver got a lot of people thinking about spirituality, and I'm one of them. I wonder, can we be spiritual without believing in supernatural forces? Can spiritual considerations really illuminate political concerns, or our understanding of history?

Transpersonal philosophers like Ken Wilber and Aldous Huxley would answer "yes" to both questions, and would go on to argue that the human race has been progressing through ever-more advanced degrees of psychological and spiritual integration. They believe that the shamans and saints, prophets and mystics of each age have been at the forefront of this evolutionary journey; the rest of us have followed along behind them, using their example and their guidance in our struggle to free ourselves from ignorance, cruelty, and suffering.

For a long time I discounted transpersonal philosophy because I couldn't find any mechanisms driving this evolution. After studying the matter for some years, I've changed my mind. Spiritual evolution is quite real, and it's rooted in the organization of the human brain.

According to psychologists Tara Bennett-Goleman and Daniel Goleman, each of us processes sensory information through two discrete neurological systems. The first system is centred in the amygdala, a structure within our evolutionarily primitive limbic system.

The amygdala uses our emotional memories to screen new experiences. If these new experiences resemble the rough outlines of past, emotionally-charged experiences, the amygdala triggers habitual response patterns called schemas. Schemas develop in early childhood, and they tend to be very irrational. Most of our self-defeating habits are rooted in these schemas. For example, if compulsions or addictions trouble you, or if you're consumed by anger or despair, vanity or shame, fear or impulsiveness, then, odds are, you've fallen prey to your schemas.

The relationship between the amygdala and psychological trauma is quite intimate: the more traumatized we are, the more sensitive our amygdalas become, and the more involuntary our schema responses feel.

The second neurological system rests in the neocortex, an area of the brain that's quite new in evolutionary terms. The neocortex houses our capacity for abstract thought; it's capable of processing far more information than the amygdala, and it encourages rational and empathic behaviour. The amygdala is like an emotional hurricane; the neocortex, like the thin and peaceful air high above the tempest.

Our myths reflect the contrast between these two systems. Throughout history, the amygdala has been personified as a demonic power, and given names like Sut, Mara, Ahriman, Satan, and the Demiurge. The transcendent potentials of the neocortex, on the other hand, have inspired myths of an inner divinity that the Dalai Lama calls our Buddha Nature, and that Tom Harpur calls the Christos or Christ-Consciousness. In North America, most people simply call it the Holy Spirit. If the amygdala is our embittered and embattled ego, then the neocortex is the vast spiritual terrain beyond the ego's tiny borders. These parallel processing systems function largely outside our conscious awareness, pursuing two very complicated and often conflicting mental lives, one in heaven, one in hell.

If we've received proper guidance-if, perhaps, we've undergone psychotherapy or training in meditation and mindfulness techniques-we can better integrate the functioning of the neocortex and the amygdala, reducing the amygdala's tendency to trigger schema attacks, and tempering those attacks when they occur. This, in turn, not only soothes our suffering, it also nourishes the development of our finest intellectual, empathic, and artistic potentials.

Unfortunately, the amygdala responds to incoming information faster than the neocortex, so it can trigger a schema attack before the neocortex can respond. Since schema attacks often prompt people to traumatize themselves and one another, and since our schemas influence both our relationships and our political activities, our amygdalas shape the conditions under which we live. This may be why so many myths proclaim that the world is dominated by demonic forces, and why spiritual growth is compared to a liberation from infernal bondage.

To spiritually evolve, our species has had to lower our levels of collective trauma while simultaneously encouraging the development of our higher faculties, gradually shifting the focus of our mental functioning from the amygdala to the neocortex, or, in mythological terms, from demonic to divine consciousness.

Because traumas cause the worst damage when they're suffered in childhood, one of the mechanisms for this transformation must be found in our child-rearing techniques. The historical record bears this out. Over the course of millennia, parenting styles have slowly improved, and, as a result, our levels of trauma have diminished considerably.

Psychohistorian Lloyd deMause argues that human societies have progressed through six major child-rearing phases. The history of Western civilization provides a good case study of this progression.

In early state societies, child-rearing was predominantly infanticidal. Unwanted children were killed, and surviving children, already traumatized by the murders of their siblings, were abused with impunity by the emotionally disturbed members of their families and communities.

In the Christian world in the first few centuries CE, infanticide gave way to abandonment. In this phase, many parents stopped killing their children, and instead handed them over to surrogate caregivers. Though these caregivers were often viciously abusive and neglectful, this practice was a definite improvement over the wholesale murder of children in the previous phase.

In Twelfth Century Western Europe, the cruelty of child-rearing began easing with the appearance of parenting manuals, legislation prohibiting men from sodomizing boys, and greater access to education. In the Sixteenth Century, rather than sending their children to surrogates, a lot of European parents started raising them themselves, which improved their attachment to their offspring.

By the Eighteenth Century, the use of humiliation and harsh physical punishment started being replaced by gentler forms of discipline intended to repress children's emotional vitality while socializing them to the values of their societies. This continues to be the most common parenting style, though earlier styles may still be found in many families.

The latest phase appeared in the mid-Twentieth Century, as some parents turned their attention to meeting the emotional needs of their children, and to helping them meet their potentials for happiness, fulfilment, and psychological development. Though this style is practised by a minority of parents, it continues to spread, and in time may become the norm. The same general pattern can be found throughout the world, even though our societies are often at different stages of parental development.

With each new child-rearing phase, childhood becomes less traumatic, neurosis and psychosis become less common and less severe, our capacity for empathy increases, and our psychological and spiritual potentials expand.

The history of child-rearing and spiritual evolution has been profoundly affected by political and economic factors, wherein we find the second mechanism. Every step towards substantive democracy, rule of law, social justice, universal education, and international peace has reduced the severity of our collective traumas and encouraged our spiritual growth. Despite the ugliness of the modern world, we need to remember that we've made significant progress along this path. Just prior to the Porto Alegre World Social Forum, an interviewer asked Noam Chomsky-a man rarely accused of excessive optimism-if a new world was possible. He replied, "Not only is there a possibility, it's a virtual certainty, unless humans succeed in destroying themselves-as they might, unfortunately.

"Furthermore, it should be a better world, at least in many respects. Why don't we live under feudalism, or kings and princes, or neo-Nazi generals? It's easy to continue like that. There are no magic keys, no simple answers; just hard, dedicated, committed struggle, in ways that we all know and many of us have experienced directly."

The final mechanism driving our spiritual evolution are our philosophies of mind, from our earliest religions to our most sophisticated psychological theories, from our first mushroom cult to our most advanced schools of prayer and meditation. Through these philosophies, we're learning who we are, and how to transform our mental and social cacophonies into a symphony.

When we put all three mechanisms together, we get the following dynamic: As we become better parents, as our society becomes more humane, as we learn more about our own minds, and then use this wisdom to heal ourselves, our collective trauma levels continue to fall. As they fall, our amygdalas grow calmer, we have more control over our schemas, the functioning of our neocortexes becomes increasingly sophisticated, and we become more ethical.

This encourages us to become better parents, to make our world a more compassionate place, and to accelerate our healing. If that isn't spiritual evolution, I don't know what is.

So yes, I believe that we can be spiritual without believing in supernatural forces, that spirituality has deep political and historical relevance, and even that our species is spiritually evolving. The real question is whether we're evolving quickly enough to surmount the catastrophically traumatizing social, technological, and ecological forces unleashed by our industrial economies. No one knows the answer to that question. At least, not yet.

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