London’s taxi drivers developed a part of the brain according to their navigational experience, what happens when we rely only on GPS for our navigation? One of my acquaintances drove his car from the south to the north of Italy. When I asked which route he took and whether he passed one town or another I named, he answered that he had not noticed because he just followed GPS indications. Is there a possibility the same brain areas which develop in taxi drivers can atrophy if they are not used? Even more worrying are studies about the development of frontal lobes of kids.
Technology is a Matter of Life and Death
Our attachment to, fascination with, and need for tools has ancient roots. Human beings, unlike other species, do not have a natural specialization which allows them to live in a specific ecological zone. We would have become extinct a long time ago if we did not operate technologically on the environment.
Technology – in the form of fire, hunting tools, or hardware to fix a plow or a tractor – is essential for survival. Mechanical tools involve the whole body, spatial imagination, attention, and concentration to operate them safely. The capacity to remember the characteristics of the territory, the operating modalities, and the location of the numerous tools is needed.
Even the most primitive populations require some tools to extend their power. For instance, humans can survive only in a narrow range of temperatures unless we provide shelter and clothes for ourselves. And very few environments were once without dangerous predators, so we have needed to provide safety – again, through tools.
We can understand why we are so attached to technology and to the power we get from it. It’s about survival. We are also hard-wired to attend to new visual stimuli, in order to discern potential threats. Attending to novel stimuli – which nowadays arrive as pixels changing on the screen – has been evolutionarily rewarded with a pleasurable dopamine shot.
Binary and Inner Duality
Technology has continued developing, bringing us to the contemporary digital technologies. The core of every computer and electronic gadget is made up of 0s and 1s, binary sequences which represent the world as encoded texts, images and videos. The inner structure of a tool reflects the ways it is used, just as the molecular structure of a material reflects its macro-features like density, texture and resistance.
Splitting, distinguishing, choosing, and repeating are the main modalities of the Boolean logic that is behind binary technology. In the computer programming languages used to develop software, one of the main logical structures is the “if-then-else” construct (“if A, then B; if else than A, then C”) that allows statements to operate on choices and dualities.
The dualistic binary modality of functioning is typical of the rational thinking mind – and the computer extends such cognitive modalities. The basic structures of the mind are also born through the first dualistic event, when a child begins to split pleasurable-good-love-warm-care sensations from unpleasurable-bad-fear-alone-hunger ones. The first mental concepts are born by splitting our experiences. The infant does not yet have any concept or way to understand what is happening around him, but he already has the capacity to perceive and sense.
Within the undifferentiated world of the infant, the first primitive dual mental structures form, closely tied to his physiology – as in feeling good or bad. Later, this dualistic attitude will create more sophisticated mental structures, like concepts and ideas with further refined differences.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the nature of the mind is understood as dualistic. Its job is to reinforce our separation from anything and anybody else. “That which possesses a sense of duality – which grasps or rejects something external – that is mind. Fundamentally, it is that which can associate with an ‘other’ – with any ‘something’ that is perceived as different from the perceiver. That is the definition of mind” (Trungpa, 1991, p. 23).
Our mind is not just a mechanical logic-oriented dualistic tool’ – we can feel emotions too. Though thinking and feeling are usually seen as different entities, mind, in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, includes emotions and sensations. Even the most appealing feelings still pertain to the mind. Emotions support the workings of the mind. “Daydreaming and discursive thoughts are not enough,” Chogyam Trungpa explains. “Those alone would be too boring. The dualistic trick would wear too thin. So we tend to create waves of emotions which go up and down: passion, aggression, ignorance, pride – all kinds of emotions” (p. 23).
Emotions support the mind to keep at its separating dualistic task. Even the computer has evolved beyond a tool that merely encourages a dry, rational attitude for our minds. Now it feeds our emotions through music, videos, sex, and social connections.
Knowing through the Heart
The mind is the generally acknowledged organ of thoughts, but is not the only cognitive modality. There is another way, through the heart, that doesn’t just deal with emotions, but has to do with the search for truth and with a direct way of knowing. The knowing heart has been considered by spiritual traditions as receptive to the intelligence of Universal Consciousness.
This spiritual heart has a connection with the body in energetic terms. The heart chakra, for instance, is located in the chest area. Even if the energetic connection is considered unscientific, it has been discovered that the physical heart has its own nerve cells which also send information to the brain.
With the discovery that the heart has its own dedicated nervous system, the Institute of HeartMath is researching the critical links between emotions, the heart-brain communication, and cognitive functions. In the article “Science of the Heart” (2001), they reported that the heart is the organ that produces the largest electrical field, about 60 times greater than the brain. An electrocardiograph (ECG) can detect it anywhere on the surface of the body. Also, the magnetic field of the heart is more than 5,000 times greater than that of the brain and can be detected several feet away, in any direction, using SQUID-based magnetometers. Perhaps further research will reveal that the neurophysiology of the heart is the physical counterpart of our capacities for subtle knowing.
The heart can be a cognitive tool wider and deeper than the mind. The heart’s modalities of knowing don’t come through splitting and reasoning, but in an intuitive and receptive way. A mind emptied of its conditionings and beliefs gives space to the heart’s cognitive faculties.
If the mind works with an either/or – or 0/1 – binary duality, the cognitive map of the heart works with a both/and logic, connecting what the mind has separated – including ourself as an individual separate from the rest of existence. The state of spiritual enlightenment in some traditions is referred to as non-dual, suggesting the end of the dualities of the mind.
How do we connect with the spiritual heart? Experientially through love, as one would imagine – but the love of a special lover. A. H. Almaas (1988) perceived that one basic quality of the soul is the love of truth for its own sake, love being the expression of truth. Just as the mental quality of objectivity necessitates love of truth – a quality of the heart – there is an interrelationship between the many qualities of the head and the heart.
The genesis of ego is defensiveness – which is a way of coping with and concealing experience that is difficult to tolerate. Thus the basic quality required for inner realization is the polar opposite of this fundamental aspect of ego. Defense and resistance are detrimental to truth, while love is supportive. Love of truth allows defensiveness to disappear and can reveal the sort of experiences that were initially defended against to establish the pattern of resistance.
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