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Discussion between Vladimir and several educationists
Vladimir just posted this very interesting discussion with several educational psychologists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HTt2D1_4Iw
Here are some of my initial reflections on the conversation:
What is attention?
Attention appears to be directed by roughly 3 different levels:
1. Below the level of conscious mind, by physical, vital and mental desires and fears
2. At the level of thinking mind – “the intelligent will” as Sri Aurobindo calls it, or the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex, as modern psychology would have it (functions such as planning, attending, decision making and discerning non-vital judgment
3. Deeper within (if we are conscious!) or higher above, the mind Silent, open to Divine direction
In the last 10 years, neuroscientists have found a network of millions of nerve cells that are active when an individual is not focused on a particular task. They refer to it as “the default mode network.”
interestingly, when this network is active in an advanced meditator, the mind is very still and quiet (they’ve examined this in many laboratory studies). But for the vast majority of people, the default mode of attention is a very unpleasant one, more ruled by fear than desire, of mind wandering.
This is explained, in evolutionary terms, as resulting from billions of years of honing of the survival mechanisms of the species. The attention of all living creatures has a “negativity bias” that evolved simply for the sake of survival. If you’re pondering the beauty of the savannah without attending to possible danger, it’s most likely you’re going to soon end up as some creature’s lunch.
In the 21st century, many if not most of us are no longer in moment-to-moment physical danger (there are a host of interesting medical implications of those with complex 21st century minds who live in the midst of real physical danger, from those in war zones to those in crime ridden neighborhoods).
But we have minds that “create” a sense of danger, of fear for the survival of our ego-personalities, that trigger physiological survival mechanisms as we worry if we’ll be fired, or if our date will be attracted to us, or we’ll lose weight on this new diet. This sets in motion an almost constant flow of hundreds or even thousands of nerve impulses and hormones that have negative effects on our cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, respiratory, musculoskeletal and many other systems of the body (not to mention deleterious effects on the brain!).
In the video, it was asked about attention at various stages of development.
Interestingly, there are now studies of cognitive behavior therapy for different ages of children (therapy which requires a level of self awareness and attention that children usually do not have before the age of 10 or 11). It’s been found that children as young as 5 can rather quickly develop an unusual level of focus and self awareness when appropriately trained.
Similarly, studies of mindfulness training in various ages of children show that such focused attention and self awareness can blossom to a degree previously not believed possible in children as young as 3 or 4.
There is an ENORMOUS amount of detailed information regarding attention, learning, memory, self awareness, etc within the world of psychology ad neuroscience that – looked at through an integral lens – may yield stunning insights.
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9 Replies
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I thought this might be fun. Jan and I worked out a simple way of formulating this for our students (in our “Sleep” and “Brain Training” courses). This might be fun and even useful for y’all.
We speak of 4 “modes” of the brain:
ONE: DEFAULT MODE (or simply, mind wandering mode)
As I mentioned above, for most people, the default state of the brain is a rather unpleasant one of mind wandering, largely drive by negative thoughts and fears – the “monkey mind”of traditional meditation texts.
In some lab studies, individuals would be placed in a room with absolutely no distractions – no screens, no books, nothing. The researchers put a small device on a table which sent a painful electrical shock (painful but not harmful)
More than 50% of the individuals sitting alone, with nothing to distract them from their minds, chose to administered painful electric shocks (often anywhere from 5 to 15 times) rather than endure the unpleasantness of having to be alone with nothing to distract them from their minds.
TWO: CONTROL MODE
Very few people are ever taught how to deal with their wandering minds. So for most human beings in the present era, they spend their work lives attempting to manipulate and control their wandering attention long enough (not usually very long!) to get some work done.
THREE: ESCAPE MODE
After a day of fighting with the wandering mind, most people seek to lose themselves in something to just get away – to escape – from the tension of fighting with themselves all day. This may be relatively innocent – involving excess food, escapist video games or movies, or more problematic – drugs, gambling, etc.
These we refer to as various forms of control mode.
ALTERNATIVE
EXPERIENTIAL MODE
Here, we let go of any attempt to control, but without resorting to escape. We simply are present with whatever is going on, not in a controlling way. We immerse ourselves in whatever we are experiencing. For those for whom this has never been made conscious, once they “get” what it is to let go of control without fearing they’ll be taken over by hidden fears, anger, cravings, etc, it can be a revelation – a revelation that it’s possible to enjoy ANY moment, any situation, without having to control or “lose one’s thinking mind” in order to escape from all that inner turmoil.
Shifting to this experiential mode is what we mean by “remembering to be.” (the phrase of course has much deeper/wider/higher implications, but we are using these analogies for individuals with no conscious interest in yoga or the evolution of consciousness)
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Very good observations and proposal to control our mental process. Thank you, Don. There are many ways to control mind without controlling it directly: observing thoughts without identifying with them (witness of manomaya purusha), focusing on breathing (partially effective, also pranayama), concentrating on a higher or deeper presence in us (aspiring and offering oneself to the higher force), silencing the mind (meditating); mental japa ( of OM), repeating mantras in the mind, reading Savitri etc.
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Yes, seemingly endless ways.
And since in our modern technocratic age, we tend to focus a lot on “techniques,” I want to put a word in for Karma Yoga. I know some of the times when the mind has been most spontaneously focused is when interviewing patients whose lives are in dire crises.
With no effort of mind, the heart opens and the words of the patient are absorbed at deep levels, which then inspire words to emerge which the ordinary thinking mind would have no access to.
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Thank you, Vladimir, for this inspiring video. It offers several points to ponder on and discuss.
What triggered my thoughts were in particular two things.
First the idea of setting a time limit, or a deadline, a temporal interval (40 days to habituate, X days to learn something, age Y of the child before we can teach them content Z1 but not Z2, etc.)
It reminds me of R. Steiner who divided child development into three 7-years cycles (body, soul, and spirit cycles). This seemed to me all very reasonable, but when I was confronted on the ground as a teacher with classes of 25 or more, all these nice categorizations didn’t make much sense from a practical standpoint. Because one quickly learns that there are children who, at the age of 7, might be already in the phase he described for the third cycle, while others were still in the initial phase of the first one. The same could be said of adults. Some need more and others less time to learn, etc. I’m generally a very slow learner, but once I learned it, I’m generally also better than average in some skills. In fact, some of my teachers classified me as a retarded that can’t concentrate despite all efforts, while others who, perhaps, could see further than the surface, recognized that I was extremely concentrated but on completely different things than those things the school system was asking me to concentrate on. So was I lacking concentration? It depends on what perspective you look at it. A typical idea is that kids should learn reading and math as soon as possible, and not later than X years. But there are cases of people who learned reading very late, and show no deficit when compared with others, while I could see some who were stressed out with doing math since kindergarten and, not surprisingly, developed dyscalculia associating math with a traumatic experience. The point is that I believe that these things can’t be generalized. A theory as a 7-year cycle development might help adults to give us a direction, a sort of mind map of what has to bd done and when, and may also be true to a certain extent (I believe there are cycles indeed, and 7 seems to be a number with a deep occult meaning in many traditions.) But when it comes to everyday reality things are much more complex and too dependent on so many factors that these temporal orderings must be taken with a grain of salt. Much depends on the individual, character, personality, and especially the directives of the psychic that will not tolerate forever being crammed into a mental box.
The second thing I noticed is our instinctive urge to define things. Can we define mind or consciousness? I don’t think so, because every definition is a mental construct. Defining mind with mind is a bit of a circular attempt. It is like trying to define milk with cheese… 😊 Of course we can try to clarify things and put into words what mind is. A collection of Sri Aurobindo’s characterizations is here: https://incarnateword.in/dict/Mind But these are not definitions. When we try to rigidly encapsulate things in definitions there will be always something escaping our understanding. Ultimately it is only through the first-person experience that one can get more clarity that emerges not by definitions but by an inner identification with the thing that is undefinable.
Anyhow, that was a very thought-provoking Zoom session. Will be glad to continue to ruminate on these topics in our next IPK session.
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Thank you, Marco, for your remarks and observations. I agree that everyone is unique in his development and we cannot apply the same formula to everyone.
Our purpose is to understand the instruments in our toolbox, in order to learn how to more consciously and therefore more efficiently use them. And not the final prescription for all possible cases, at least not yet.
The second point of defining mind, totally agree with you. Sri Aurobindo mentions somewhere that to understand mind we need to realise the Supermind, because mind is only a shadow or rather a projection of it. Our purpose here is to understand the major characteristics of the mind in relation to other faculties of consciousness. We want to find a quintessential quality of the mental activity and concentrate on its development. Rather than roaming in the dark.
The second point needs more clarification, because on this understanding the whole IPK concept is built.
We shall talk more in our meeting.
best,
v
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“He [man] has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga – I: The Three Steps of Nature
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These are very important points.
To put it in neurological language, defining is the task of the left hemisphere, experiencing and knowing directly the task of the right.
Our lives begin with right hemisphere dominance as infants. The left hemisphere comes online – generally – somewhere between age 1 and 3. According to Iain McGilchrist, the left hemisphere ALWAYS functions best as a servant, but in our modern age (the era Jean Gebser refers to as one dominated by the deficient structure of mental consciousness) the servant has become the master, as in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPDSoFgivPA
If we remain connected to direct experience, we KNOW what the mind is. Then when we say, “at the present moment, the mental consciousness is constructing words to convey thoughts, ideas and experiences.”
We have not and never will come up with a perfect “Definition” – but without over analysis, everyone knows what it means to construct words to convey thoughts, ideas and experiences!
When we open to the spiritual mind levels, we may find ourselves to be an infinite Spiritual Reality (or “one” with such a Reality) and have direct knowledge (by identity) of an unbroken, inseparable Field of Consciousness multiple yet always One, infinitely varied in word-sounding and infinitely more…..
Now imagine trying to “define” for the surface mind what the words mean in the above paragraph!!!
Recognizing the impossibility of perfect definitions, I find myself more and more, as I (as the body-mind) ages, just loving childlike simplicity in communication.
I listen to you and you listen to me. I speak to you and you speak to me. I can feel what kind of words i this moment are best suited to share with you what I’m feeling and thinking; without having to figure it out before hand or control or manipulate my speech, simply by opening my heart to you, the words flow out.
How simple and sweet!
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Profound!
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I came to the forum just now to post this in practical integral yoga, but it fits here as well:
‘Do not forget even for a moment that all this has been created by Him out of Himself. Not only is He present in everything, but also He is everything. The differences are only in expression and manifestation.
If you forget this you lose everything.’
Mirra Alfassa, The Mother, 1954
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