Wei Wu Wei when he writes, “Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself—and there isn’t one.”2
First, I will explain the idea that the left brain is an interpreter or story-maker. Pattern recognition, language, mapmaking, and categorization are all located in the left brain, and the evidence suggests that it is exactly these types of functions that collectively lead to the sensation of a self and the strong belief in its absolute truth. We will explore how the unique functions of the left brain give rise not only to the sense of self but also account for why it is so difficult to see beyond this illusion and why this sensation creates so much suffering in the human condition. Once we understand how the left brain operates, we will take a closer look at the right brain and how it works, which includes things such as finding meaning, our ability to see and understand big-picture ideas, expressing creativity, experiencing emotions, and spatial processing.
One: Meet the Interpreter—An Accidental Discovery
To begin, the most interesting aspect of the brain is also one of the most obvious: the brain has two mirror halves connected by a large set of fibers called the corpus callosum. In the 1960s, in research undertaken to try to mitigate severe epilepsy, these 800 million nerve fibers were severed, the central thesis being that seizure activity crossed from one side of the brain to the other over the corpus callosum, increasing the severity of seizures.
Gazzaniga determined that the left side of the brain created explanations and reasons to help make sense of what was going on. The left brain acted as an
“interpreter” for reality. Furthermore, Gazzaniga found that this interpreter was often completely and totally wrong.
Here is what’s most important about this: the talking left side of the brain easily came up with a plausible and coherent, but completely incorrect explanation based on the evidence it had available. In another example, researchers presented the word walk to a patient’s right brain only. The patient immediately responded to the request and stood up and started to leave the van in which the testing was taking place. When the patient’s left brain (language side) was asked why he got up to walk, again the interpreter came up with a plausible but completely incorrect explanation: “I’m going into the house to get a Coke.”
“You guys come up and test us each month. What a way to make a living!” Remember, the correct answer here would have been, “I laughed because you asked me to.” Think about the significance of this for a moment. The left brain was simply making up interpretations, or stories, for events that were happening in a way that made sense to that side of the brain
Dr. V. S. Ramachandran, one of the most innovative neuroscientists of the twentieth century, shared a theory of the left brain that is very similar to Gazzaniga’s. After conducting his own experiments, Ramachandran found that the left brain’s role is one of beliefs and interpretation and that it had little regard for reality in making up its interpretations.
They would say things like “I don’t want to move my arm, it hurts,” or, “The medical students have been prodding me all day and I don’t want to move it right now.” As in the studies of Gazzaniga, the left brain was simply making up a story about reality without any regard for the truth.
Misattributed Arousal A few more classic studies implicitly suggest that the self is not what it appears to be. Misattributed arousal is the idea that when our nervous system is stimulated or excited—when our blood pressure goes up and our heart beats faster—the left-brain interpreter will make up a story about the origin of this arousal, and often that story is completely wrong.
That is to say that arousal and passion—among other intense emotions—can quickly overcome our ability to reason, leaving our left-brain interpreter free to make up a story that it believes is a solid fit.
These studies indicate that both attraction and dislike can be just another interpretation of the left brain, and the faster our hearts are beating and the more we are sweating, the more intense that interpretation. A different pair of researchers asked people to rate the attractiveness of an individual by showing them a photograph—but they were only shown this photograph either before or after they rode a roller coaster. Attractiveness ratings were higher after the subject rode the roller coaster because the interpreter mistook the
arousal of the ride as the arousal of attraction. This research has also helped reveal the intelligence and sophistication of the left-brain interpreter. The arousal effect was not present for those riding with a romantic partner! In other words, if you—or rather your left brain—is already in a relationship, no degree of caffeine or amusement park rides will result in finding a stranger more attractive.
These studies strongly suggest that we live our lives under the direction of the interpreter, and for most of us the mind is a master we are not even aware of. We may become angry, offended, sexually aroused, happy, or fearful, and we do not question the authenticity of these thoughts and experiences. While it is clear that these experiences are happening to us, we somehow retain the idea that we are still in charge of it all.
However, because many people are not conscious of the left-brain interpreter, they can’t even consider that their thoughts are interpretations, but rather feel secure they are seeing things “as they really are.”
When an interpretation is later revealed to be not true, the interpretive mind sometimes labels it a mistake, but based on the findings of these early experiments, it’s safe to say that many of these interpreted mistakes go unrealized and we never know it.
The second thing that is overlooked in the explanation “I made an assumption” is the presumption of “I.” In these experiments, the “I” that makes an assumption is really just the interpretive portion of the mind. We have already seen that this “I” can be wrong about so many things in the “outside” world, so is it possible then that the “I” is even wrong about the interpretation of itself? This is what Gazzaniga is getting at when he talks about “Our Fictional Self.”
Perhaps this explains why the world of psychology has paid so little attention to the implications of Gazzaniga’s findings. In my own experience having lectured on this topic for twenty years, toward the end of a talk I’m just sure that students will throw things at me, rebel and protest, or simply walk out when I say the evidence suggests the self as we think of it doesn’t exist. Yet again and again, the students sit there and continue to take notes after I have completely challenged their ideas of who they think they are. I can ask over and over why they have no reaction to this bombshell I’ve dropped on them, and yet every time I’m met with blank faces and the occasional nervous laugh in hopes that I’ll move on to another topic. When I do get a reaction, it seems similar to what other researchers have had to deal with: that perhaps I am a madman. As I’ve said, the self has several built-in mechanisms to ensure it is taken seriously. The importance of these experiments may be easy to ignore cognitively, but understanding and experiencing the profound ramifications of this work can radically change your life. I say this because even though the left-brain interpreter is always on and cannot be turned off, once it is recognized—or that is to say, once we become aware of its constant interpretations—a new awareness of ourselves and the world begins. Instead of being so identified with the “me” in our heads, we find ourselves noticing things like “that’s my left-brain interpreter telling stories.” When the stories it creates don’t evoke as strong a mental or emotional reaction, our suffering lessens as a result.
What’s on your list? I’ll bet it includes things like table, chair, tree, grass, car, computer, etc. I will also bet that the word nothing is not on your list. That’s very interesting, because as we will explore in a later chapter, the vast majority of what is actually out there and connects things in a way that the left brain cannot process is nothing or empty space. This quick exercise is designed to show you how the left side of the brain works: it focuses on objects in space, labels them, categorizes them, and tries to make sense out of them. We have become such experts at organizing our perceptions into categories and patterns that it’s difficult to see reality in any other way.
Have you ever looked up at the stars in the night sky or the clouds during the day and been convinced some pattern was out there? Is it possible that you might be making that same mistake every day when you look within and find an ego or self?
Two: Language and Categories—The Tools of the Interpreting Mind
The mind is a tool. The question is, do you use the tool or does the tool use you? —Zen proverb
Now that we have met the left-brain interpreter and demonstrated how it is constantly analyzing our experience and coming up with stories about reality—regardless of whether or not they are true—it is time to introduce you to two of the primary tools the left-brain interpreter uses: language and categorization.
While the right brain does not control speech, we know from Tan’s case and the research on the split-brain patients that it understands the written and spoken word.
This landmark case, in addition to many studies since then, laid the groundwork for our understanding that the left brain is the dominant center for language. Importantly, this includes the inner speech we use when we talk to ourselves.
This internal dialogue is happening continually for almost everyone on the planet, and it plays a central role in the creation of the mirage that we call the self.
In Iain McGilchrist’s masterpiece of a book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World,4 he describes the central role of the left brain as a mapmaker to reality, and language is the pen with which the left brain draws.
There is an old Zen proverb that points to this problem, advising against “confusing the menu with the food.” When the mind mistakes the map for reality, the result is that we carry on blindly in a world of language-based stories created by the left-brain interpreter.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with making maps in general—we need them. The issue, as scholar Alfred Korzybski, the developer of the field of general semantics, might have speculated, is that the left brain mistakes the map for the territory.
Our association of our true self with the constant voice in our head is an instance of mistaking the map (the voice) for the territory (who we really are). This error is one of the biggest reasons the illusion of self is so difficult to see.
In what is likely the most studied experiment in the history of psychology, the Stroop effect6 demonstrates how the left brain takes language literally and mistakes the symbol for the thing itself.
This would be easy. Next, imagine that a particular color was presented in the form of a word, say RED written in the color red. Your left brain would like this very much. But what would happen if the word were YELLOW, but written in the color blue?
This slowed reaction time is what is known as the Stroop effect. Why does a mere shake-up in symbols and colors cause us to stutter and stall out so badly? Because the left brain confuses the map with the territory, it reads the word YELLOW and calls up the actual color yellow instead of the blue it was written in.
Furthermore, our left brain is so tied to the power of words that it is hard to see their effect. Think of an example in your own life when someone said something to you that you found hurtful. You may have suffered greatly, but the truth is that this person was simply sharing an opinion and expressing it via sounds emanating from their voice box. How is it possible that such a thing “hurt” you? Obviously you were hurt by your interpretation of it or the map that these sounds created in your left brain. Next, imagine for a moment if there were no self to hurt? Would words directed at this “you” ever be seen as a problem?
It is much easier to carry a map of the park in your back pocket than the actual park itself. Maps leave out details which could be confusing if you were trying to navigate by every bird, plant, or car on the street. However, maps stop being useful when they are mistaken for what they represent. You can’t play ball in a paper map of a park. In this way, language is an excellent servant but a terrible master. Or put another way, words are wonderful tools, but as the old Zen proverb queries, “Do you use the tool or does the tool use you?”
“fresh frozen… there’s no such thing: it is either fresh or it is frozen.” But marketers know that writing the word fresh on the package will change our perception of the food. It is easy to be fooled by what words tell us, because we have put so much stock into language as a reliable map of reality.
For instance, imagine if you showed up at the university where I teach and asked me to show you the university. After being shown one building after another, you begin to get frustrated and say, “Yes, I’ve seen this building and that building but where is the university?” I would have to point to the left side of my head and say, “it is only up here,” because it exists as a category and so it may change depending on whom you talk to.
Furthermore, the left brain’s obsession with categories also provides a nice example of how the left brain can tie itself in knots. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If God created everything, who created God? The deeper you go, the more you are tied up in a causality dilemma with infinite regress. This is the conundrum of the left brain: there is a limit to its understanding through categorizing and interpreting, and although we can hit that limit quickly and easily, many people, including some of the most well-known psychologists and Western philosophers, disregard this fact and put all their stock in the power of thinking.
Judgments Categories are created by taking something continuous and drawing the proverbial line in the sand to separate one into two. The placement of this line requires a judgment. Without judgment, categories could not exist. In fact, one could go so far as to say the next closest word for interpreter would be judge (but without the moral aspect of judgment). To interpret is to judge things, and there is no way around this. Exactly where along the continuum of temperature does cold become hot? When do you get offended? When does good become evil? When does something become a catastrophe? A failure? When does being poor become being rich? When does happiness become sadness? Where do you draw the line for any and all of these?
Recognizing this has immense practical benefits. Simply becoming aware of the interpreter and the endless categories it creates through judgment frees you from being tied to the inevitability of these judgments. That is to say, when you become conscious of the interpreter, you are free to choose to no longer take its interpretations so seriously.
you might find yourself able to grasp this as “just my opinion” or “the way I see it” rather than “this is the way it is.” You begin to see your judgments as simply a different line in the sand than others.
A momentary judgment of “They don’t like me” doesn’t have to spiral into the sweaty palms and increasing heart rate of a mini panic attack. This awareness of the interpreter can profoundly change how you experience the world. In addition, when you begin to observe the interpreter, you find that you make fewer judgments and can take your judgments less seriously. You know that they just happen.
Beliefs are very interesting, because they do hold very real power over us in some fascinating ways. In fact, science uses and controls for this tool, a subject that most of us are aware of as the placebo effect. A placebo is a procedure or pill that does not do anything. For instance, a placebo might be a saline drip or a sugar pill rather than medication.
One of the tenets of Eastern philosophy and Buddhism in particular is that we are not our thoughts and beliefs. Of course, when we identify as the interpreter—when we are unaware of its effects and are possessed by it—perhaps then we could say that we are in fact our thoughts and beliefs.
Having no control over beliefs can be a source of anxiety in belief-based religious systems. Many of these systems are set up such that eternal salvation or morality rest upon relying on a certain belief. And since it is impossible to control our beliefs, it may be impossible to be saved, making this a bit nerve-racking. Worse yet, if you believe there is an omnipotent being that can read all your
thoughts, you can’t simply pretend or make something up like I do when my wife asks me which curtains I like and I pick one.
Holding this possibility in our minds, we can see that once the belief in the individual self is anchored, we then further divide and categorize this individual self and turn this imaginary self into a project for self-improvement. This results
in the twin beliefs that “this is how I am,” and “this is how I want to be,” but this internal split is just more of the left brain doing its job to separate all things into opposing categories.
the interpreter also works to separate and categorize the inner world into the conflicting beliefs of a controller (present self) and something else to be controlled (future self), creating an inner conflict that cannot be resolved.
Notice the Power of Yes vs. No
While some parts of the reaction might be the same—surprise, curiosity, etc.—they would not be the same reaction. NO makes you feel a certain way, as does YES. Place your hands to isolate on the page the word no as illustrated here and read it internally for a few moments. Do the same thing with the word yes. Do you notice any difference within yourself? Does yes have a positive feeling for you while no the other? This points to the power we give words.