© 1995 Darryl Reanney
© 1995 The Brotherhood of Man Library
In this work, the author makes use of a model by biologist, Paul McLean, that treats the human brain as a composite structure composed of three-layered interlocking elements, each with its own software and input and output channels. The oldest layer is the reptilian brain. Above this is the paleocortex or limbic system (paleomammalian), and above that the neocortex (neomammalian).[paleo, ancient; neo, new]
The limbic system is the engine of the four basic instincts (feeding, fighting, fleeing, and fornicating). Behaviour is cyclic and repetitive. In the rat, food intake runs in a three hour cycle, oestrous repeats on a four-day clock. For the human female the menstrual cycle has the same periodicity as the moon. Also there is a universal diurnal rhythm coupled to the daily light-dark cycle imposed by the rotational periodicity of the earth.
Instinctive behavior has positive and negative feedback located in the limbic and hypothalamic centers. Stimulation of the positive center for eating activity will cause the laboratory animal to eat copiously, far beyond its real needs, while stimulating the negative center will cause it to starve itself to death. In effect these are reward and punishment centers. Test animals may stimulate themselves for twenty four hours without a rest, or they may switch off with equal dedication when the negative site is stimulated. In doing so, their actions illustrate the basically mechanistic nature of instinctive behavior.
Bedded deeply in the mind are dual programs which are the exact reciprocal in the sense that one arouses while the other diminishes the consummation of the ‘drive’ in question—be it eating, fighting, or mating. These linked opposites are reflected in the contrasting human attributes of pleasure and pain, reward and punishment being their derived values. At the extremes, these may become emotive hyper-states —ecstasy and agony. These opposites find expression such as heaven or bliss which equivalate to reward, while hell or agony equivalate to punishment.
The instincts derived from the reptilian core and the limbic system are hard wired into the brain and generate our “ego-awareness” which reflects basically animal behavioral traits such as eating and drinking, defending in the face of danger, the fight or flee reaction, and the instinct that drives us to reproduce. Reproduction is a unique instinct that involves two individuals, in which the emotion of lust is modified by complicating value judgements.
Instincts are triggered by a specific signal—an innate releasing mechanism (IRM). For example, the male stickleback fish, on seeing the color red on the belly of another male, will respond with an attack reaction aimed at driving the other from its territory. Hormones affect the response threshold of the reaction but are not the actual trigger signal (IRM). Out of the breeding season when hormone levels are diminished, the male stickleback ignores the red belly of another male. Once triggered by an IRM, the animal engages in a response reaction which is consummatory, acting to remove the source of motivation. Instinctive behavior is fundamentally goal-driven and goal-oriented—a negative feedback control system leading to homeostasis.
The gratification that follows consummation of an instinct means that the demands of the body no longer intrude into the realm of mentality; the psyche can sink back into the easeful slumber of semi-consciousness—homeostasis experienced as contentment or happiness. Thus consummatory pleasure is the basic archetype of human “happiness.”
Whereas an aroused animal will simply carry out a consummatory act in the eternal present, in the human being the symbolate mind often interposes sets of intermediate actions between the archetypal urge and its archetypal fulfilment. For example, we may dream of what we would do if we won a lottery and, though the variations may be enormous, they nevertheless cluster around good food, a holiday in the sun, indulgent sex, absence of stress, the goals that, for the most part, form the motivational foundation of psychology. The goal orientated archetype of instinctive behavior is the basis for almost all purposeful mental activity. The force that draws behavior through complicated sequences of conscious actions all too often comes from the ever powerful magnet in the subconscious realm of the limbic brain where the pleasure/pain nuclei lie. We should not underestimate this magnet—think of the laboratory rat which self-stimulates its own pleasure center until it drops from exhaustion.
The second law of thermodynamics encodes a universal tendency for order to decay into disorder, for information to degenerate into noise, for complex systems to move back towards a state of inertia, homeostasis or equilibrium. Analogous processes operate in human psychology and there is a tendency to psychic laziness, a desire to opt out of the struggle.
COURT DRAMA: Taking things literaliy
Q. And lastly, Gary, all your responses must bel oral. O.K.? What school did you go to?
A. Oral.
Q. How old are you?
A. Oral.
In the metaphorical imagery of religion, the Devil is not merely the tempter who whispers to lie down in easeful slumber. He is also the mythical embodiment of the very hardships which make us suffer and, in suffering, transcend our present limitation. The things that seem so cruel, so unfair, so tragic are the very things which prevent the human psyche from falling back into the inertia of indolence.
The equilibrium state is a state of no change —effectively a timeless state. The happiness that comes from this state lives only in the “now”. It is the unhappiness of an unstable, non-equilibrium situation that thrusts awareness into time. The arrow of time is defined by the direction of increasing entropy, the direction a system spontaneously adopts as it tends to equilibrium. Having attained that goal, time loses all meaning. It is the unstable state that creates time.
The equilibrium state, the ‘happy state’ that the human being usually sees as desirable, is one that, at base, reflects the archetype instinctive urges deriving from the hard-wired, paleomammalian limbic system and the reptilian core. These are the most primitive ‘animal’ components of our brain. This kind of equilibrium is a metastable state, a pseudo equilibrium that is poised on the verge of collapse.
The state that Jesus called ‘being reborn’ can only occur when we let go of this animalistic metastable state. In doing so, we free ourselves from the false goals that our minds have invented to disguise the reality from which those animalistic goals are derived. These are the basic instincts of appeasing hunger, the urge to survive, the fight or flight instinct, their derivatives of hate, anger, and fear, plus the sex-based instincts that serve to ensure the perpetuation of the species.
The death of the old heralds the birth of the new, a new stable state into which the lessened ego-self settles, one that is both simpler and more beautiful. Out of that death comes more perfect life, for death is the midwife of creative change, of transcendence.
At root, the goal of the new metastable and timeless state has a commonalty of insight in all the great religions:
Christianity: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do even so unto them (Matthew 7:12)
Judaism: What is hurtful to yourself do not to your fellow man. (Talmud)
Taoism: Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and regard your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.
Hinduism: Do nought to others which if done to thee would cause thee pain. (Mahabaharata 5.15.17)
Buddhism: Hurt not others with that which pains yourself. (Udanavarga 5.18)
Jesus: This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12)
The feeling that each of us is capable of ‘loving the world’ is a common human intuition. At taproot level we are our fellows, the distinctions that divide us are functions of our animal ego and of differing phases of growth. The collective reality of pooled human consciousness—not separate as in ego, but together as in true communion—is one and indivisible. One cannot cause pain to another without causing pain in oneself. “I and my Father are one.” affirms Christianity. The Atman is the Brahman, says Hinduism. (i.e. the true Self is the Supreme Being)
Each human individual can connect to beings and objects around him, starting with another human being, perhaps a sexual partner, and ending with the totality of all, the universe. Through these successive communions, one rule, one basic premise has always held true. Each act of union lessons the boundary between self and other. This is the absolute and final criterion by which all action can be measured and judged.
There is a ‘gap at the center’ in Western civilization due to the breakdown of the old faiths. The restoration of a sense of the sacred is the most important task of this generation.
Every new revelation of truth has given rise to a new cult, and even the restatement of the religion of Jesus must develop a new and appropriate symbolism. Modern man must find adequate symbolism for his new and expanding ideas, ideals, and loyalties. This enhanced symbol must arise out of religious living, spiritual experience. And this higher symbolism of a higher civilization must be predicated on the concept of the fatherhood of God and be pregnant with the mighty ideal of the brotherhood of man. (UB 87:7.6)
People may say it is more important to combat the greenhouse effect, planetary pollution, and so on. But these are the direct consequences of the “me-first” competitiveness of the ego-self. The only way to reverse planetary degradation is to break down the barriers that wall us off from each other and the world, and to recognize that aphorisms like “brotherhood of man” are not romantic, pie-in-the-sky daydreams but practical patents.
To help achieve this, we need to re-introduce a cycle of rituals into life—not grandiose self-important charades but participatory ceremonies that have their roots in human needs—rituals that give meaning to our lives by connecting us to the goal of the sublime glory that we shall be. We all need human contact because we belong to something bigger than ourselves. We should create new rites of passage to celebrate the phases of the human life cycle, rituals for birth, rituals for the transit into adolescence, and above all, rituals for dying. Dying must again be associated with a sense of the sacred, for it is here that the psyche transcends its human limitation. Consciousness cannot be extinguished by death for consciousness transcends time.
We should learn to approach death with gratitude, seeing it for what it is, the elimination of ego, the end of the fallacies of time and self, for time and self are outgrown husks which consciousness will one day discard, just as a butterfly abandons its chrysalis to fly towards the sun.