The One You Feed - Dr. Chris Niebauer on Neuropsychology and the Thinking Mind

Starting point is 00:00:00 When we analyze if we have a thinking problem, we're using the very tools that we use when we think. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

Starting point is 00:00:41 But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor?

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Starting point is 00:02:37 Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr. Chris Niebauer. Chris holds a PhD in cognitive neuropsychology, specializing in the differences between the left and the right sides of the human brain. He's currently a professor at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, where he teaches courses on consciousness, mindfulness, left and right brain differences, and artificial intelligence. His new book is No Self, No Problem, How Neuropsychology is Catching Up with Buddhism. Hi, Chris. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to have you on. You are a

Starting point is 00:03:18 second-time guest. It's a somewhat elite crew, I suppose, if you've been looking for some very small way to feel better about yourself, I suppose there's that. No, seriously, thanks for coming back. We're going to talk about your latest book, which is called No Self, No Problem, How Neuropsychology is Catching Up to Buddhism. But before we do, let's start like we always do with a parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,

Starting point is 00:04:03 which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It's such a great story. I was on the show about four years ago, and I really think that it's been percolating sort of in either in the back of my consciousness or really in the front of my consciousness in one way or another. And so I think it came out in No Self, No Problem, particularly at the end of the book. To me, the parable is something that we live with every morning. We get up in the morning and we make a choice between the positive and the negative. And the interesting thing about this choice is that from a psychological standpoint, you don't really have to be particularly introspective.

Starting point is 00:04:49 It should be rather obvious to us that the positive is self-rewarding. If you practice gratitude, if you practice compassion, it feels good. And the interesting thing about the negative, and I think everyone kind of knows this, is that you're not punished for your anger. You're punished by your anger. You know the consequences of taking that negative path, of feeding the negative. And yet it's like a habit that we've gotten into where so many of us still get up and we turn the news on. We start our day. We start off feeding the negative. And the question becomes, why are we doing this? Why are we engaging in something that it shouldn't really be happening? Because if anything, the reverse should be happening.

Starting point is 00:05:30 Gratitude and compassion are so self-rewarding, it should just come easy to us. So one of the things I've pondered for the last few years is, why would we make this choice? Why would we do something that is so self-inflicting in terms of pain and suffering? What it did is it led me back to questioning, where did the idea of the self come from? Did we always have an idea of the self? And it became more obvious to me that we are a species. And I didn't come up with this quote. I think it was Graham Hancock. He said, we're a species that suffers from amnesia. And I think that is a really good way to put it. So we started thinking, when did we start thinking? When did we start feeding the negative? Was it something that

Starting point is 00:06:14 human beings always did? You know, the numbers can be pretty amazing. So as human beings, we've been on the planet about two and a half million years. Our version of being a human, Homo sapiens, we've only been around maybe 200, 300,000 years. And the remarkable thing is that we've only been thinking the way that we think, the way you and I and your listeners, we've only been thinking for about 40,000 years, maybe 70,000. That's not a very long time. But the interesting thing about thinking is that it's almost like a program that we've inherited. And when you compare our world now to how human beings lived 40, 50, 60,000 years ago, in a way we needed to feed the negative. Our environment was so unpredictable. It's almost impossible to imagine what our environment was

Starting point is 00:07:05 like. I mean, imagine a glacier outside. Imagine, you know, sub-zero temperatures and no food, and there's no microwaves, and there's no heat. It's almost like an exercise in itself to imagine what it would be like to live this long ago. So in a way, human beings survived this almost unimaginable environment. How did we do it? Well, some archaeologists, some people have speculated that it could have been this thinking program. And the thinking program strategizes, it creates in-groups, it creates out-groups, it's paranoid. It really does all those things that you're talking about in terms of feeding the negative. So what I'm getting at here is this idea that it's not a

Starting point is 00:07:46 fair fight. So each of us has this battle for the negative and the positive inside of us going on every day. And we know we should be choosing the positive because it feels good. It's self-rewarding. It's a path of peace, tranquility, and we know we should be feeding it. And we know what happens when we do. So the question is, why aren't we doing this? Well, one speculation that I really have been exploring is that we have this program, I actually call it Mind 1.0. And Mind 1.0 is a program that is biological. It was something that, for whatever reasons, came online about 40,000 years ago. It was very helpful for us to survive. It got us out of a really

Starting point is 00:08:26 terrible mess. And we were competing with six different versions of humans at the time, and we were the only ones that survived. So we can be very thankful for this program. The problem is, and the reason I call it Mind 1.0 is because it's never been updated. It's a point we're living with a 40,000-year-old program in our skull. Imagine a program on your computer that's 10 years outdated. Well, imagine having a 40,000-year-old outdated program in your skull. And it lives off that negative. The negative is how it survived. But we don't need it any longer. Now the question is, how do we become conscious of this Mind 1.0 program? How do we stop feeding it because it's no longer useful to us? And take a path that, on some level, all of us absolutely know is intrinsically more healthy.

Starting point is 00:09:17 And that's the path to the positive. There's a lot in there that I think is important, and we're going to get into some of the different aspects of it. I guess my big question coming out of what you just said would be, why do we still have mind 1.0? This is a question I never fully understand when we talk about evolutionary psychology, is what is taking so long for us to evolve? Because you can see evolution happen in something like a series of foxes over a number of generations. You know, you can breed a fox in a number of generations to have pretty different traits. Why are we lagging so far behind? Is it just that it takes longer? Is it that there's no conscious choice about it? Like, you know, in the case of the fox, it's a very controlled thing.

Starting point is 00:10:06 Or is it that the pace of change is so fast we never get settled enough? Or something I'm not even thinking. I think a lot is contributing to it. To me, I think the biggest variable, the most important factor, is the invisibility of the program itself. It has a transparency to it. We don't know it's a program. We go around with feelings of paranoia, you know, in-group, out-group, and we really buy into it. We really think that

Starting point is 00:10:33 this person is our enemy. We don't recognize the program. So how are you going to really evolve past the program when you don't even recognize that it's a program? Imagine if your computer had a problem, you never recognize the problem. I mean, the reason we update our computers is because it's so obvious to us. You know, it crashes and we get feedback and we realize this. With Mind 1.0, the problem is it's invisible to us. But I think that's why it was so successful. It was so successful because no one actually noticed it was a program. They absolutely bought into it for reality. actually noticed it was a program. They absolutely bought into it for reality. Which is by design. It's by design, I think, that we not see a lot of the ways that we react to the world. If we're thinking about it just from a survival basis, it's better to not even know.

Starting point is 00:11:20 It's better to just react. I mean, there's so much fascinating data on this, and I'd like to start to move into some of it here. Let's move directly into the title of the book, No Self, No Problem. What do we mean by no self? This is a Buddhist concept, is where it primarily comes from, and it's talked about a lot, and it's probably the least, at least in my experience in my own life for a long time, and with a lot of people I talked to, it's the least accessible of the Buddhist teachings. One's about impermanence, about craving. These all make intuitive sense. We're like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. But you hear no self and you're like, well, what the heck does that mean? Because as sure as I sit here, it seems like I'm sitting here. So what are we getting at when we say no self? I think you hit on the most successful part of the program. The reason the program was so successful is it created an image of a self. This became so natural. It felt so convincing that when people talk about it, like it's not there, it's almost impossible to really buy into.

Starting point is 00:12:24 I have people pick up my book sometimes and they'll say that exact thing. They'll say, well, this is silly. Of course I'm me. You know, here I am. What are you saying that there is no me? And I actually think in some ways, although it wouldn't have made for such a simple title, I could have really titled it No Serious Self, No Serious Problems. There's obviously a practical self in a way, the self exists, kind of a social agreement. Like, obviously, I pay my bills, you know, I don't pay yours. And I drive my... You can start anytime.

Starting point is 00:12:58 You know, I get in my car and I come to my house and I have my family. And so on a practical level, yes, there is a practical self. And so that's not what I'm getting at at all. What I'm getting at is to believe in it in a way that's absolutely serious, to believe that it has some kind of solid, consistent, like it's an actual thing. You know, if we take a look at the self and we play with it and have a little bit of fun with it and invent it and recognize I do a practice with my students in the book it's called how many cells do you have in a day and so it's a good way to start practicing the experience of this illusion and all you

Starting point is 00:13:37 do is start taking notes of how many different selves come and go through one day like right now I have a particular self with a microphone here and on a podcast. And then I've got some guitars over there and I'll start playing guitar. And I have this different self. And I've got my kids that come home in a couple hours. And the self is just continuously changing. Sometimes we have an angry self and then sometimes we'll have a peaceful self. And so when you start noticing the self, it's like, it's really like a continuous flow of different selves. And you may have a hundred different selves in one day. And the question is, do you think there's a self behind those selves? That's what I'm really

Starting point is 00:14:15 pointing to. No, the self can be fun. It's like theater. The self is like theater. We're putting on a show. We can actually have a lot of fun with it. But if you take it seriously, that's when you start questioning, well, you know, what's going to happen to this self when I die? That's when the fear of death comes in. And that's when we take things very seriously. And things like, well, if you get embarrassed or if you have anxiety, all of this stems from taking the self very seriously. Like it's a real thing. It's the same thing that you go to a movie. I was watching a rather terrible movie about these people who, you know, all these horrible things happen to them.

Starting point is 00:14:47 And there's a certain sense where it's entertaining because you're not taking it very seriously. Of course, if this was all real, we would all have been horrified. It would have been a terrible movie. No one would have ever voluntarily watched this. But you watch it in an entertaining way because we know there's no substance to it. We know they're just acting. And that's what I'm really getting at with the self. It's like, there's no self behind the self. There's no seriousness to the self. And when you have that experience that there's no seriousness

Starting point is 00:15:13 and there's no self behind the self, and this is one of the things neuroscience has just been so conclusive about, it goes back again when you look at the Buddha's second lecture on no self. That's what he was getting at. You know, something that anyone can experience because feelings and thoughts keep coming, perceptions, and it's a flow. There's nothing solid to any of it. The only thing that seems solid is the idea we have of who we think we are. And that idea gets us into trouble because once we buy into it and it becomes serious, it brings all kinds of problems with it. Whose problems do you worry about when you're lying in bed at night? Your problems. That's what happens with the self. As soon as you take it seriously,

Starting point is 00:15:56 it's like this magnet and it attracts all these kinds of problems with it. And when you see it for what it really is, it's just an idea. It's an idea that comes and goes very whimsically. It's very playful. Then the problems go along with it. Yeah. I think that it's helpful to sometimes approach this as you're doing by saying, when we say no self, we think, well, that's crazy because here I am, right? But I think it can be really helpful to start to talk about where does that sense of here I am come from. And one of the most fascinating sets of studies that you talk about in this book, and we've referenced on this show before, is the studies around split brain patients. And what it shows is that there's a part of our brain, it's what we know is what Buddhism and lots of other spiritual traditions say, and it's what neuroscience is pointing out, that we have this part of the brain that's narrating everything. Often called the left brain narrator, sometimes called the press secretary, to give it a slightly different term.

Starting point is 00:16:59 It's basically always narrating what's happening. And we think it's narrating reality. But when we start to see these split brain patients, we start to see that it's not actually narrating reality, it's creating reality. So tell us a little bit about some of those. And then I'll share what I've seen with my partner, Jenny's mom who has Alzheimer's, because I've been able to see this play out in her very clearly. It's a fascinating insight into human history that we make things up. One of the things people wanted, and this is what I responded to in the new book coming out, like, again, where did this stuff come from? Well, this thinking mind, is it accurate? And of course, the answer to that is absolutely not. I mean, the thinking mind, is it accurate? And of course, the answer to that is absolutely not. I mean, the thinking mind, all it had to do was be right just enough for us to survive. You know, it could

Starting point is 00:17:49 have been 49% wrong. And that's really huge insight to our species. So we've been on the planet now as homo sapiens, maybe two or 300,000 years. For the vast majority of that, we've always believed we were right. We've confused our thoughts with actual reality, something the philosophers call naive realism. And it wasn't until the split brain patients, and of course Freud speculated on this too, so I won't say that was a pivotal point, and he talked about it a little earlier, so did Nietzsche. But really with the split brain patients, we had such concrete evidence that the isolated left brain just makes things up. So they would send a message to the right brain, and again, these are split brain patients, so they're literally, the left and right sides of the brain are physically disconnected.

Starting point is 00:18:33 And they would send a message to the right brain, something like, raise your hand. And then they would ask the patient, well, why is your hand in the air? Well, the left brain is completely in the dark, it has no clue. And it should have just admitted, I don't know. As human beings, we don't do that. It's a very no clue. And it should have just admitted, I don't know. As human beings, we don't do that. It's a very rare moment. How many times have you seen a human being just admit, I don't know? That left brain program kicks in, and that's what we're able to observe with these split brain patients. The program kicks in and just makes up a story. And that's part of it. The making up and the confabulation is part of it. The second more interesting thing to me is how easily we buy into it.

Starting point is 00:19:08 If you look at the split brain patients, when they were doing all these studies, sending messages to the right brain and getting people to stand up and then asking their left brain, why did you just stand up? You would think maybe the patient would pause for a moment and then try to figure it out, but they don't. The left brain, that's what it does. It so effortlessly comes up with this explanation. It's based on the data and it's a reasonable explanation, but here's the thing. It's wrong. And it's wrong, not just a little bit. It's wrong so often that

Starting point is 00:19:37 as a species, we should have been almost the cover of every magazine. It should have been like, look, humans, we make things up. We make up stories and we believe them. And the interesting thing about the split brain patients is it's still such an effective program that we're still trying to incorporate this. And it's very easy. Well, I know your brain makes things up. You know, it's easy to talk like that, but it's much more difficult for us to accept that my brain makes things up. One of the themes in the book is to mistake the map for the territory. And maps are really useful.

Starting point is 00:20:11 Thoughts are very useful. And if we learn to use them as a tool, they can be very helpful. If we mistake them for reality, we're going to start, you know, using a hammer for everything. And it doesn't work like that. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

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Starting point is 00:21:44 or wherever you get your podcasts. The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week buying power column. Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means.

Starting point is 00:22:20 And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. What I've observed, as I was saying about Ginny's mom who has Alzheimer's, is we'll see these situations where, similar to split-brain patients, she wanders into the kitchen. And I know she wandered into the kitchen because I brought her in the kitchen, let's just say as an example. But if I ask her why she's in the kitchen, she will immediately come up with an answer. And that answer is not true.

Starting point is 00:23:02 She will immediately come up with an answer. And that answer is not true. But what's so staggering is, like you say, it's not that she's just telling me a lie. She's absolutely convinced that it is true. And it's stunning to watch how fast it happens and how certain she is. And someone with Alzheimer's who clearly is just making things up. One of the things that happens in Alzheimer's is confabulation. I think what happens is two different memories merge together. So you'll hear her suddenly saying something that's completely insane.

Starting point is 00:23:35 But I've learned the hard way, you don't wander into that conversation and try and convince them of why they're wrong because they will double down and they will double down and they will double down. And again, it's not because they're trying to be deceptive, it's because they genuinely believe it. And it's been stunning to watch that happen so clearly in another human, and realize that some version of that is happening in me. What freaks me out about it is that I don't know what it is. If I know that my brain is just out there interpreting events and seeing them as really solid, and then I go, well, I don't know which ones it's interpreting. It's sort of a disconcerting feeling when you go,

Starting point is 00:24:17 I must be wrong about a bunch of things, but I have no idea which ones. That's a wonderful insight. And it's something I come back to many times in the book that you can't fix a thinking problem with more thinking. You know, the interpreter is all about thinking. It's all about what we will call reasoning and using the data and doing analyses and linear processing and language. And the problem with thinking problem is you can't solve it with more thinking. We just get deeper into it. So you say, well, I'm going to figure out my interpreter. And then what happens? And you see this a lot with people on spiritual trips.

Starting point is 00:24:50 And, you know, it ends up becoming, you know, more of an ego trip than any kind of spiritual trip. That's because they were trying to get out of the interpreter by using the interpreter. And all that does is dig you deeper and deeper. And so it feels like this is what I do now. I'm helping people with simple practical exercises to help them engage in right brain consciousness, because that's the real way out. You're not going to get out of the thinking problem with more thinking, but there are all kinds of ways to get out of a thinking problem. You just can't think about it. Let's talk about some of those. I think that's a really good place to go. But on our way there, I want to hit real quick some of what you

Starting point is 00:25:31 just said, which is that more thinking doesn't solve a thinking problem. Another way of saying that that I sometimes resonate with is it's a different type of thinking that we need. Because we could say that the right brain, which is where you're pointing to a lot of solutions. And I think where a lot of spiritual traditions are trying to orient us towards that the right brain is thinking, it's just a very different type of thinking. So we need to engage very different parts of our brain than what we normally rely on, which is the left brain narrator that just is always telling the story. And the joke I make with my coaching clients a lot, although it's not

Starting point is 00:26:10 really a joke, because it's totally real, is part of the problem is that our brain always talks in its own voice. So if my brain is like, Eric, you should go get some heroin today and rob three liquor stores. That's the same voice that says, maybe you should sit on the meditation cushion for two hours. Like, they talk in the same voice. It always cracks me up because it's like, well, it all sounds reasonable because it's coming through that same voice. So what we're trying to do, I think, what you're pointing to from a neuropsychology perspective, and what I think spiritual traditions are pointing to in a slightly different way, is to engage these other parts of our brain. So say a little bit

Starting point is 00:26:50 about what these other parts of our brains are and why they help us around this sort of problem. Well, you make a really interesting point about the voice in the head, that it's really one of the strangest things. If it wasn't normal, we would all think we're crazy. I mean, it's just, it's a weird thing to not just hear a voice, but you hear it all the time. And it's very difficult to shut off. You know, people, this is one, when people start meditating, they try to silence the voice in the head and it just becomes even louder. So you start wondering, you know, well, if I could control the voice in my head, why can't I just turn it off?

Starting point is 00:27:25 And one of the most interesting kind of first experiences people have is recognizing that they can't turn it off So I can't be the voice in my head. I must be the person listening to it I must be the awareness listening to the voice I'm not the actual voice if I was then I'd have some control over I could influence it So the first thing to me is recognizing the voice in the head for what it is. It's a left brain program that's based in language. It's programmed for survival. So it's going to be very paranoid. Even things when it says to sit down and meditate, it's going to do that with a goal of self-improvement. It's going to do it because I want to be better. But the

Starting point is 00:27:59 remarkable thing about a thinking problem is how tied in it is with actual thinking. Now, I get what you're saying about the right brain has its own way of thinking. And I absolutely agree with that. We can use whatever word we want to. And I think that why that might be a nice way to think about it is because really the thinking of the left brain is so tied in with language that when we get to all the stuff I'm talking about with the right brain, all we have to do is leave language behind. Whatever you do is an absence of words. And so I do an exercise in my class. I just asked them, because students, they really want a lot of explicit instructions. And I didn't give them any. I just said, what does music mean to me? It's an essay. Work on it. And I got back to some amazing stuff I actually had one student say something like if I could marry music I would

Starting point is 00:28:49 It was it was these things like music gives me the ultimate meaning to my I mean it was incredible music How important it is to our lives even though it doesn't really serve any function the left brain can think of you know What does it do for us? It's not satisfying any physiological goal. It's not making me a better person. It's not improving myself. It's nothing I can learn. You know, that's not why people listen to music. I mean, some professional musicians do, but most people just do it for no reason. So something as simple as music encapsulates all the things I get at when I say, look, take a break from thinking. Okay, well, a lot of people are already taking a break from thinking. The problem is that the way, and this is a little difficult to follow, but the reason thinking is such a persistent problem is because when we

Starting point is 00:29:36 analyze, if we have a thinking problem, we're using the very tools that we use when we think. So we're doing a lot of right brain things already. We're just not valuing them from the left brain perspective when it tries to assess my life. It's not including any of these. And so when I talk about right brain consciousness or right brain thinking, we're already doing a lot of it. We just need to become more aware of what we're already doing to a large extent. Yep. Is it safe to say from a neuroscience perspective, both right and left brains, just the brain as a whole is just always doing its thing. We talk about it as if like, well, now the left brain is on and the right brain must be off.

Starting point is 00:30:17 That's not the way it works, right? It's always doing stuff. It's just where we are orienting our attention and what we're prioritizing and valuing. Well, the interesting thing about the left-right brain dichotomy is that that obviously is a construction of the left brain. I mean, that's the way the left brain thinks. It comes up with simple categories that oversimplifies reality and then takes these very seriously. You're absolutely right. Both sides of the brain are always on. They contribute to everything that we do, even though I speak sometimes very simplistically, like language of the left brain. And there's a lot to say for that in the sense that the left brain does control language. When we talk to ourselves, it's clear that its thing and it's analyzing the context, it's analyzing all kinds of things that big picture, the emotional tone of the voice. It's just that we're not really tuned into it. And you know, the left brain, it only hears itself when it's speaking.

Starting point is 00:31:16 And the thing about thinking, so when you get into this, you can really see how thinking has dominated our culture, but it has cut us off from the totality of our existence. Thinking, we think in one thought at a time. And the wonderful thing about music is it's so vast. There's so much going on. And so you can't really think about music. When I talk about accessing right brain consciousness, right brain thinking, what I tell people is do something that is beyond the capacity of the left brain thinking mind. And so all you need to do is start rock climbing. If you're climbing a rock, you're so into your body awareness and not falling, you're

Starting point is 00:31:54 probably not thinking at all. And that's the same with meditation. Meditation is creating a pace that's way too slow for the thinking mind. So the thinking mind has a certain pace to it. You know, it's like one thing at a time, and it has a certain almost rhythm to it. And if you create a frequency that's too fast, too complex, or too slow, the thinking mind really can't exist at those levels. And so it's this kind of wonderful break from thinking. Thank you. There's something that I do sometimes that helps or takes me into a slightly different place,

Starting point is 00:32:54 and I'm curious if there's any neuropsychological basis to it. But it's basically, you know, sometimes in meditation we are focusing on something like, okay, hear the sounds. I right, I'm hearing the sounds. Notice something in your body. Notice your body. Notice your breath. What I find is really interesting, though, is if I try and merge all those into one moment where I go, can I hear, see, feel all of it at the same exact time? see, feel, all of it at the same exact time. And when I do that, it almost feels like it short circuits. It's almost, I feel like my thinking brain just explodes and it goes,

Starting point is 00:33:33 oh, it's too much. And this space emerges. That's a wonderful form of meditation. And you know, meditation can take two different paths. The most common is to try to slow things down. And so the thinking mind becomes terribly bored. And that's why people first get so bored when they meditate, because it's just too slow a pace. But I like to go with that other form that you're talking about, where you sit outside and first you notice the birds, and then you notice a couple cars in the background. And you're seeing how open consciousness can be to everything happening at once. And this is so interesting, because when you do consciousness research, there's such a confusion right now between the thinking mind and consciousness. So many consciousness researchers, even very well-known consciousness researchers will say,

Starting point is 00:34:13 well, you can only be conscious of one thing at a time. I don't believe that. Even something like music or an orchestra, how many things are you simultaneously conscious of all at once? But you're not thinking about it. You can't think. If you slow down and try to think about it, then you have to pick one instrument and one line and one melody. So I like that. That's a very powerful type of meditation. When you open up, that's a great way to disconnect a thinking mind from consciousness. Because so many of us get confused. We think that thinking mind and consciousness are one and the same. But you need those type of experiences like you just described. When you experience everything

Starting point is 00:34:48 happening at once, you realize consciousness has to be far more vast than this tiny little thinking mind that thinks in language. And when that becomes obvious to consciousness researchers, we're going to have to reevaluate exactly what we think consciousness is. Right. It's almost as if what we're saying there is we can only left brain narrate one thought at a time. But to think that the brain is only doing one thing at a time seems to me to be profoundly crazy. It is. Right now, I'm regulating my body temperature. I've got 87 or 86 billion neurons in my head, and I'm orchestrating all of that right now. I'm doing all of that. And that's the interesting thing about the notion of the self. There's something about the thinking mind that wants there to be a captain. The thinking mind wants there to be a

Starting point is 00:35:42 pilot. And the problem is, is that that's just thought. There is no real pilot. I'm doing all this stuff right now, simultaneously. And of course, one of the things psychology is historically guilty of is they'll say, well, these are all unconscious processes. Well, to the thinking mind, anything that isn't thinking, it immediately assumes is unconscious. But that's the interesting thing when we start exploring different forms of meditation, when you start realizing, well, how much can I hold in consciousness at once? And then all of a sudden, we have these wonderful experiences where you're holding in an entire orchestra of information. It's all happening.

Starting point is 00:36:20 And it's this beautiful moment. It's just you can't think about it. And that's a really nice way to realize the limitations of the thinking mind. We don't want to throw the thinking mind out. It's really useful. It's very helpful. We just want to put it in its place and recognize it's a useful tool, but it's not synonymous with consciousness. And most importantly, it's not who I am. The thinking mind is a wonderful tool, but if you confuse it for who you are, which is probably the most common mistake in Western culture, the thinking mind is geared around finding problems. And we know this, and there's some really interesting research that if you eliminate all the possible problems, the thinking mind just creates new ones. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

Starting point is 00:37:06 our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

Starting point is 00:37:29 His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Starting point is 00:37:42 Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

Starting point is 00:37:52 And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Const, it's amazing. When you look at the things that we complain about, it's really remarkable. You know, it's cloudy today. You know, I mean, it's two degrees cooler than I wish it would be.

Starting point is 00:38:17 You know, my car doesn't do zero to 60 in under six seconds. You know, it's just continuous. Totally. Yeah. Hopefully, you know, when I lead people from the left brain and explain what the mechanics of the thinking mind are, and one of the outcomes is that it would create this idea of a self. And when you, to use a kind of cliche, but when you're expanding your consciousness, or at least recognizing your consciousness is far more vast than the thinking mind, then a lot of those problems that were associated with the self

Starting point is 00:38:48 disappear. And that's what I think is the real function of neuropsychology. I don't think neuropsychology is here to tell us who we are. I think it's here to tell us who we're not. And so we take all these functions of the brain and we start mapping everything out and say, well, here's the language center. And every time we do this, we figure out that's not who I am. That's not my true self. Like you do in Buddhism, you eliminate the whole list. And then what are you left with? You're left with a mystery that cannot be put into words. But you also at the same time recognize that's it. That is who I am. Yeah, I agree. And I think that this idea of no self, it can be very abstract.

Starting point is 00:39:25 Take this all the way to no self. We go, well, hold on a second. That doesn't make any sense. And it gets very abstract. We can start approaching this with, I think, as you're sort of saying, just sort of starting to shed layers of identity. And it's that Buddhist process or the netty netty process, not this, not that, right? Of just slowly going, all right, I define myself as a podcaster. Well, there was a lot of my life I wasn't a podcaster, I was still me. Okay, so that must not be what I'm at. If I changed and suddenly became a Republican, would I still be me? As near as I can tell, yeah. And whatever amount of that we can do, whether it's two layers of identity or the whole enchilada, opens up these increasing levels of freedom.

Starting point is 00:40:14 It has been my experience anyway. Yeah, and you really just gave the Buddhist the second lecture. That was really the approach he took. Buddhism was once summarized as everything changes. That was like the shortest summary of Buddhism ever given. And of course, if everything changes, how can I be a stable self? You know, I can't. There's no stability in reality.

Starting point is 00:40:34 Everything is changing. Everything is flowing. And so we see how these are a little, you know, temporary. And I like, you know, again, like the idea of theater, like, you know, political stuff. I mean, that's just something that you're playing. And, you know, and you may change. People change all the time. They change political parties. They change their philosophy. And sometimes people have very profound changes. The persistent nature of the self is remarkable, which again, I think even shows more strongly that it's an illusion. Yeah. You've got a great quote in the book,

Starting point is 00:41:03 and I can never say this guy's name, Nisgardada Maharaj. I might have been in the neighborhood of that. Closer than I would have gotten. Yeah. But this quote really blows my mind. It says, identity is merely a pattern of events in time and space. Change the pattern, and you have changed the person. And I think that's such a powerful statement and really speaks to this idea of, you know, I'm just this collection of events. I'm just this collection of causes and conditions. Well, you're getting to the point of how people change. And it's always very small. You go by small changes. You don't wake up one morning and say, that's it. I'm not this person. Some people

Starting point is 00:41:44 do. You know, you hear these stories of people like Eckhart Tolle. I mean, he just had such a radical change. One morning, he woke up a completely different self than he was. But I don't think that holds for most of us. For most of us, it's small little habits where we get up and instead of watching the news, you listen to the birds, you know, tiny little things to disconnect. If you want to think about rewiring or updating the Mind 1.0 program, you want to really talk about reprogramming it. It's not going to come in one process. It's going to be slow, but you're always free to do this. And that's, I think, where we get to our choices. And they're small little things, but they build up. And

Starting point is 00:42:23 suddenly over a few months, you're a totally different self you know sometimes people say well you've got to start meditating and we get this image oh i had a better sit down for 30 minutes and i don't really buy into that very much and actually the research is kind of showing that you can meditate well how much time do you need in the timeless state how much time do you need in in a state of timelessness and it's a wonderful thing about like my cheeks and i called it flow but when you're in this state of timelessness? And that's the wonderful thing about, like my cheeks and my eye called it flow. But when you're in this state of flow, there is no such thing as time. All the concepts of time and space, all the concepts of who I am, it's all gone. So how much time do you think you need to spend there? I mean, the question doesn't make, it doesn't even make

Starting point is 00:43:01 any sense, really. So I'm not this advocate of like sit down you need an hour a day of meditation for me i meditate when i meditate i don't keep track of it one of the practices i've been working on is something that affects our lives a lot more than a lot of people think of and that's counting and it's kind of strange to realize that there's this small part in your left brain and this is true for left-handers and right-handers. The reason this article came out a few years ago and the reason it was so significant is because the way a left-handed person's brain is organized is usually very different than a right-hander. But in this case, it didn't matter if you're a lefty or righty, this part of the left brain lit up anytime you're counting and using numbers. And it occurred to me, that's another illusion

Starting point is 00:43:42 of the thinking mind. Numbers have come into our lives as this reality. Like I think really right now, you know, it's three o'clock or it's four o'clock or it's March. You know, we've taken time. We've given numbers to every aspect of like, I'm supposedly 54 years old. You know, if I buy into the socially constructed reality, that's taken a continuous reality and broken it up into years, years of what, you know, and so even something as simple as counting is another way that we've taken a continuous, ultimately timeless state, selfless state of consciousness, and brought all these abstractions into it. And, and those are fine. But we've also taken those abstractions really seriously. And, and of course, the issue is that they bring along all kinds of problems that we also take seriously.

Starting point is 00:44:37 You talk about in the book, I like the way you talk about this, you say that this pattern perception machine in the left brain is a biological function that is working all the time and it's virtually impossible to stop. And then you go on to say the trick is to become less identified with your thoughts, not to take them so seriously, to see them as happenings rather than the way things really are. And this is what's so interesting to me about meditation is that it took me a long time to really see what was happening. And by that, what I mean is I was so focused on thinking I should be able to shut it off and feeling like I was failing that I then just clamped down tighter instead of the realization that came to me later, which was like, well, I'll be damned.

Starting point is 00:45:24 Look at that thing go. I don't seem to be having anything to do with this. At least the I, as I know, the me that has some sort of consciousness choice is sitting here trying to, let's say, count breaths. Here I got the counter going, right? But this whole other thing is happening, whether I want it to or not. And that can be really disconcerting. And we can feel like, oh, I'm a failure. But it can also be tremendously liberating. If we go, ah, okay then. Well, I guess that's not really me.

Starting point is 00:45:59 A big part of it to me is to go, oh, look, there it goes. I can't seem to stop it. I certainly have no control of what pops up. And so maybe I can relax around it a little bit. To me, it's one of those moments, and I don't know if you've had these, they seem to happen to me all the time where I think I lost my phone. I'm looking around for it everywhere. And then I noticed it's in my hand. I had this happen with my boxer shorts recently. I cannot find my parrot boxers. And we were getting ready to go to Atlanta. I looked everywhere. First thing I did when we got to Atlanta, because they're my

Starting point is 00:46:28 favorite boxers. That's probably more than anybody needs to know. Listeners know I love parrots. I ran in, run around looking, can't find them. And then of course, that night when I'm climbing into bed, I'll be like, well, that's where they are. They're on my body. Yeah. And you laughed, right? I mean, you just can't help laughing. And I can't help thinking on some kind of cosmic level that that's the game that's being played. You know, we forget who we really are, you know, and forgetting it, it's just this kind of funny little thing we're playing because, you know, here we are.

Starting point is 00:46:58 Not the thinking mind, but our true cosmic reality of who we are. And it's always right in our hand. And it's just, we've forgotten about it because we've gotten tied into the thinking mind. But when you have those moments and you recognize, oh, that was never who I was to begin with. For me, at least, I can't help laughing a little bit. It reflects that the universe has some sense of humor to it. That's wonderful. Well, you and I are out of time in the post-show conversation. You and I are going to talk. I'm actually going to get back to the thread I dropped earlier of some exercises that we can do that help us to identify with the left brain less or

Starting point is 00:47:37 identify with the right brain more or however we want to say that. So I'm going to let you give us a couple of those practices in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to the post-show conversation, you can go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. You can get all the post-show conversations. You can get ad-free episodes. You can get a special episode I do each week called A Teaching, A Song, and A Poem. And you can also get the joy of supporting a show that you love to listen to. And that as an independent podcast, we can always use your support. That's when you feed.net slash join. Chris, thanks so much for taking the time to come back on.

Starting point is 00:48:14 It's been a pleasure to have you on. We'll have links in the show notes to your book and to your website and your YouTube channel and all that great stuff. So thanks so much. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community.

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The One You Feed - Dr. Chris Niebauer on Neuropsychology and the Thinking Mind

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