chapters

The Soul Illusion

I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic.
I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts,
it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.

 —  Irvin Yalom

Some otherwise competent individuals repeatedly and knowingly act counter to their own interests. They are not intending to hurt themselves; they are taken in by an illusion. The Soul Illusion results from the presumed, but bogus, premise of perception, namely that we see the world as it really is. In fact, what we see is a representation of the world created by our nervous system.

When a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, is there a sound?

Neural science has an answer: No!

When the tree falls, it produces a series of pressure waves in the surrounding air. The eardrum converts these waves into a mechanical signal which is transmitted by 3 small bones to the fluid-filled cochlea - the spiral bony canal of the inner ear. Hair cells of the cochlea are the actual receptors. Each is tuned to a particular frequency of the fluid waves. Hair cell vibrations are converted to electrical impulses and transmitted along the auditory nerve to the auditory cortex where the intensity and frequency of the vibrations are mapped. Neither pressure waves, physical movements of body parts [bones, hair], nor electrical signals are sound. Sound is an experience that is created by, and exists only in, the mind of the perceiver.

So, if there is no one around to hear it, a tree falling in the forest produces no sound — only pressure waves in the surrounding air.

Perception differs qualitatively from the physical properties of the stimulus. The nervous system extracts only certain information from the natural world. We perceive fluctuations of air pressure not as pressure waves but as sounds that we hear. We perceive electromagnetic waves of different frequencies as colors that we see. We perceive chemical compounds dissolved in air or water as specific smells or tastes.

In the words of neurologist Sir John Eccles: "I want you to realize that there exists no color in the natural world, and no sound - nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent." Sounds, colors, and patterns appear to have an independent reality, yet are, in fact, constructed by, and only exist within an individual's nervous system. To make sense of the stimulation it receives, the brain abstracts from raw sensory data to create perceptions.  This perceptual system is imperfect. The representation it finally produces contains distortions that arise from the limitations of the perceptual apparatus and the biases of the perceiver.

We confabulate the world we live in

Some neurological disorders result in memory impairment so profound that the patient is not able to remember how she got to the clinician's office. When asked about the sequence of events that led to her arrival, the patient will often confabulate a story. The false explanation is called a confabulation [rather than a lie] because the patient is not intending to mislead the clinician. The patient seems to unconsciously create a plausible story to answer the clinician's question. 

Inside the skull, it is dark and quiet. The brain creates the subjective phenomena that we experience as images and sounds from the input it receives from visual and auditory neurons. These neurons have been transmitting the information they received from sensory organs that have the remarkable ability to obtain information from the outside world and translate it into signals the nervous system can use. However, our visual apparatus is only sensitive to a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum; likewise, there are many sound frequencies that are too low or too high for our auditory apparatus to perceive. The bloodhound, the bat, and the dolphin create different maps to the world through different sensory apparatus than we do, and so their representations of reality are different than ours. Our experience of reality is "a best guess" construction [confabulation] the brain makes from the incomplete data it receives.

In order to respond in real-time, we have to act as if this representation of our environment—our map— is the way things actually are. Most of the time our map is good enough for us to react adaptively to the things that happen, so we are unaware that it is a creative fiction. And this is the crux of our problem.

Trapped in Maya

The Soul Illusion is the consequence of failing to appreciate the difference between the objective world and our perception of that world —that is, going beyond the adaptive convenience of acting as if our representations of reality were valid and believing that we see things as they really are.

In eastern philosophy, we are viewed as trapped in "Maya.” The entrapment results from the tacit, but false, premise of perception that we perceive the world as it really is. In fact, all subjective experience is a creative construction of a nervous system with a particular learning history and point of view. Your emotional reactions to the things that happen are based upon your judgments about them, which, in turn, are influenced by your past history, biological predispositions, and other sources of bias. Even though they feel like they are being caused by external events they are your inventions.

Reification: The birth of subjective reality

As a child, I discovered that if I became uncomfortably frightened during a horror movie, I could remind myself that "the creature from the black lagoon" was an actor wearing a rubber suit—who probably had an agent pulling strings to get him this part. The shift from the first-person perspective [in which I intentionally suspended my disbelief for entertainment purposes] to the third-person perspective of watching myself watch the movie broke the trance. I no longer experienced the fear but was no longer as entertained. (Optical illusions and psychological symptoms work the same way).

The Meta-Cognitive Awareness that subjective experience is determined by the interpretations you reify not by what is factually true frees you to act mindfully. Your emotional reactions to the things that happen is the result of the same bio-psychological processes that elicit the emotions you experience while watching an engrossing movie. You can break the trance induced by the movie by shifting your perspective to considering the motives of the filmmakers. Likewise, you can lessen the emotional impact of your interpretation of the things that happen by reminding yourself that it was created by a nervous system biased by your personal history and, current motivations and emotions.

Becoming free of the trance induced by your current interpretation of the things that happen gives you more control over your subjective experience than if you regarded your interpretations as if they were the same as concrete reality.

The problem drinker who is certain that one drink won't hurt and the jealous lover who is certain (but wrong) that their partner is unfaithful both assume that they are seeing things as they really are. They reify these creative fictions by acting as if they are true. Someone who saw them make the same error in the past and swear not to repeat it may be surprised that they fail to learn the lessons that unwanted outcome was trying to teach them.

As a rule of thumb, past experience with an optical illusion does not prevent you from being taken in by it when you see it again. The same is true for the Soul Illusion [the bogus assumption that I see things as they really are]. The way to decrease your vulnerability to is is to practice looking at things from different perspectives. Optical illusions provide a good opportunity to practice shifting between the first-person and the observer's perspective in a non-threatening situation. As you become more familiar with the process of making the shift, you will become less attached to any one perspective and hence less vulnerable to the bogus assumption that you know the truth.

Socrates said: "The only thing I know is that I know nothing." This is as valid for us as it was for Socrates. This is the truth that will make you free, but freedom requires the courage to accept it. After all, the truth is cruel.

 

 

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