Spirituality and Science - PART 5

Till now we saw, how the external world we perceive through our senses is illusory. This fact is exactly reflected in many of the verses in spiritual scriptures. For example, in Tulsi Ramayan Lord Shiva says to Parvati -
"उमा कहु मै अनुभव अपना,
सत्य हरी भजन जगत सबा सपना"

O Uma, let me tell you my experience. Contemplation of God (pure consciousness) alone is the truth and the world is a dream

In Bhagvat Puran Lord Krishna says to Uddhava -
"यथा मनोरथधियः विषयानुभवः मृषा।
स्वप्नदृष्टाः च दाशार्ह तथा संसारः आत्मनः॥"

As imaginations and dream perceptions are unreal, so also, O Uddhava, is the relative existence of sense-experience of the self is unreal.

 
In Brihadaranyaka Upanishad Rishi Yagnyavalkya tells -
"न तत्र रथा न रथयोगा न पन्थानो भवन्त्यथ रथान्रथयोगान्पथ: सृजते,
न तत्रानन्दा मुद: प्रमुदो भवन्त्यथानन्दान्मुद: प्रमुद: सृजते,
न तत्र वेशान्ता: पुष्करिण्य:स्त्रवंत्यो भवन्त्यथ वेशान्तानपुष्करिणी: स्त्रवंती सृजते सा ही कर्ता"
There are no real chariots in that state, nor animals to be yoked  to them, nor roads there, but he creates the chariots, animals  and roads. There are no pleasures in that state, no joys, no  rejoicings, but he creates the pleasures, joys and rejoicings.  There are no pools in that state, no reservoirs, no rivers, but he  creates the pools, reservoirs and rivers. He indeed is the agent.

Now, upon understanding fallacy in external things, lets look inside us. The most fundamental thing in our life is our own identity... the perception of our own existence, which is known as 'self consciousness'. Every other perception is built upon this primary perception. This pervasive feeling of 'self' is known as 'अहंकार' or ego. The term ego here does not refer to 'self pride' or arrogance. It simply stands for perception of an inherent agent 'I' in every act and experience of our life. For example, when we lift a glass with our hand, we say that "I lifted this glass", we do not say that "hand lifted this glass". This very feeling of being doer of all actions and being separate from rest of the world is 'अहंकार' (अहम् = I + कार = doer,अहंकार = I am doer)  or ego. Now, where from this ego arises ? To find this, let's ask ourself a simple question - 'where am I located currently ?' Can we point out a single place in our body where this 'I' can be located ? We can not. But we perceive our whole body and our mental state as 'I'. So, ego is an integral sum of perception of all our body parts plus our mental state (emotions, instincts).

Neuroscience gives detailed explanation for this. In our body, there are nerves running from all parts of body towards brain as shown in adjacent figure (Courtesy: http://neuropathydoctor.com/tell-me-more-about-neuropathy). These nerves bring information about status of all parts simultaneously. Brain integrates this information and builds a relative map of body parts. And thus we perceive where our different body parts like hands, feet are located in space.

Proprioception

This three dimensional spatial map build by brain is called as 'body map'. And the process of building this map from nervous stimuli is known as proprioception. It happens in right parietal lobe of our brain. Proprioception not only tells us positional information, but also leads to construction of feeling of self consciousness. Construction of this ego happens by integrating body map with emotional states and states of some parts of brain itself. Thus ego is a collective representation of physical + emotional + physiological status of our whole system.

There are some diseases which provided scientist a window into mystery of perception of 'self'. A neurological problem known as body integrity identity disorder (BIID), is a condition in which brain fails to build a complete body map. This results in distorted body image. And patient feels mismatch between perceived body schema and actual body seen through eyes. Most of the times BIID is about one of the legs. Such patient feels that one of his leg is superfluous and experience anxiety because of that. This also creates strong obsession to ampute that limb! Another disorder known alien hand syndrome results in patients one of hands behaving involuntarily. These patients experience that some other agency has taken control of their hand. They totally loose volitional control over it and feel that the hand is not part of their 'self' anymore, instead it is a separate living entity attached to their body ! This disorder is prominent in patients whose corpus callosom (a part joining two hemispheres of brain) is injured. Yet another very common phenomenon in neurology is phantom limbs. It's observed in patients who undergo amputation of their limb (leg or hand or even other organs). These patients experience that the amputated limb is still attached to body and even moving according to their volition. They can feel sensations like warmth, cold, itching and even touch in their limb. But they also perceive some distortions in their limb, like the limb is shorted or has change in its shape. Phantom limbs can exist for long time, like many years after amputation. The reason behind phantom limbs is, body map which had existed in brain for long time does not get suddenly erased. Scientist are able to identify areas in brain which are responsible for generating body maps and impart sense of agency. Researcher like Olaf Blanke, Michael Persinger have discovered that when hey stimulate certain part of temporal lobe with electric signals or trans-cranial magnets, subjects feel alteration in their body map, or even out of body experiences. It is found that out of body experience can also be induced by drugs which affect brain areas.

All these disorders and experiments show us that, perception of our self image - the 'ego' is manipulable. So ego is not a hard bounded thing. It is in fact a perceptual construct created by our cognition... It is merely an illusory experience, just like the outer world is experienced! Experiments have shown that certain other mammals - chimpanzees, gorillas, bottle-nosed dolphins, and elephants - also have this capacity for self-awareness. Then question arises, why does brain needs to create this illusory 'self' ? Well, we know that our body is developed through process of evolution. Similarly our senses, our cognition also goes through this evolutionary up-gradation. Higher and higher levels of perceptions are built in more and more developed species. Ego is a very high level perception developed in us through progressive evolution of our cognition. Ego has survival significance. According to some theories, it plays important role in construction of certain other emotions like empathy, which add to survival values of a specie.

Till now we saw how 'bodily I-ness'(अहम्) part of अहंकार is constructed in our mind by process of proprioception. In next post, we will analyze more on doer (कार) part of अहंकार. The 'कार' part is known as 'free will' in scientific domain. Free will is a very important topic discussed by western philosophy for long time. And there has been some scientific research which has improved understanding of free will.