Psychology’s Gordian Knot (#8)

King Gordia of Phrygia tied a knot so complex it couldn’t be untied. An oracle revealed that the knot would only be undone by the future master of Asia. Alexander the Great cut the knot and fulfilled the prophecy. The legend has come to symbolize solutions to intractable problems found in unconventional thought.
Perhaps the most perplexing and inexplicable enigmas of human behavior is why people advance their religions using methods expressly forbidden by those same religions. A more concrete expression of the question is why Jews, Christians and Muslims (among others) violate the Sixth Commandment in the name of their religions?
The staggering hypocrisy of the behavior and its frequency both cross-culturally and historically imply that it is probably not the work of bad apple zealots but, rather, a peculiarity in human beings as a species. This oddity and virtually all other human behavior can be understood and logically explained once we have a metaphor which corresponds to our psychic anatomy.
We are three brained beings. In other words each of us has three independent but interconnected brains or centers which are each capable of contextualizing experience and dictating our behavior. Each has its own capabilities and each is to a degree able to perform the work of the others. This is an adaptive characteristic. Our three brains or centers are physical, emotional and mental.
The physical center is our body. Its proper functions include the life sustaining activities of our autonomic nervous system. Our reflexes including the fight or flight response are within this domain as is our sex drive. Our ability to perform activities of physical culture is its proper work. Our five senses of perception are first experienced in this center. Sometimes the perception caused by stimuli to any of our five senses can stay within the physical center. Alternatively it can trigger activity in either or both of the other two centers. Some examples might be useful.
Say you’re cooking breakfast in a cast iron pan. You try to move the pan from a burner but forget that the iron handle is hot. You simultaneously perceive the heat and release your hand. Our nervous system is wired to remove our hand from the heat source before the nerve impulse even hits the brain or mental center. We have a reflex in our elbow as a self protective mechanism to prevent burns. In this example the sensory stimuli (hot handle) and the behavior (moving your hand) occurred all within the physical center.
An example of how an impulse can stimulate more than one center is: you’re cooking breakfast and the aroma of frying bacon and fresh coffee is initially perceived by the physical center but, triggers the memory of Sunday mornings in your childhood farmhouse together with the happiness you experienced there .The feeling of joy occurs in the emotional center. You begin to speak to your sister about the memory. Language occurs in the mental center.
The value of these examples is that they provide a notion of what experience belongs to what center. They also show how quickly “control” over behavior can move among the centers. In many people aromas which are initially perceived in the physical center have a pronounced link to the emotional center.
A final example of the work of the physical center illustrates the chief work of this center and how one center can perform the work of another. Many of the physical activities that we perform are done on “automatic pilot”. We can drive a car, swim, run or dance once we learn or more specifically once our physical center learns the activity.
Recollect the process of learning to ride a bicycle. First our mental center controls pedaling, steering and balance as our mental center tries to control our movements and execute the verbal instructions someone else has given us. Inevitably the slowness of the mental center makes the process much more awkward than it is once the physical center begins to coordinate pedaling, steering and balance without any involvement of the mental center. Once the physical center assumes responsibility you can ride. The rest of your bike riding career will be performed almost exclusively by the physical center. Very occasionally the mental center may be required to cope with an unusual problem. Your ride into the path of escaping bank robbers might require involvement of the mental center to logically deduce your safest path of escape.
Our emotional center is the part of us which experiences emotions. Because the word feeling describes both emotions and sensations confusion is almost unavoidable.
Emotions always both feel good or bad and include the following experiences: anger, jealousy, fear, guilt, shame and joy. Sensations can be good, bad or neutral and are usually initially experienced in the physical center.
Our emotional center is the part of us that allows us to empathize with other people. This center provides us the ability to feel other peoples’ emotions as though they were our own. Its’ proper work also includes intuition and perhaps most important it is the seat of our conscience, the part of us that automatically knows right from wrong. Finally, it is the center which contains the eternal spark of our Creator present in each of us. This spark acts with our conscience the way magnetic north orients and energizes the needle of a compass. It is also the esoteric meaning of the parable of the mustard seed.
For those of you who skipped Sunday school this week Jesus was asked to describe heaven. He said heaven was like a mustard seed the smallest seed in the garden but, the one that grows into the largest bush, so large that birds can live in its branches.[1] I do not know if the language Aramaic which Jesus spoke contained the word spark at the time he told this parable. What a seed and a spark have in common is that they both represent something inchoate, which is un-manifested potential. What I believe he was getting at was we have potential heaven (seed or spark) in our emotional center. To grow properly means to manifest our full spiritual potential (largest bush) and by doing so we serve creation (birds in the branches).
Our intellectual center separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is the center that creates and manipulates systems of symbols such as language, written, spoken, computer, musical, and mathematical. It is the part of us which places things in categories. Its’ proper work compares, contrasts and reasons. Its ability to analyze and apply logic is responsible for our use of tools, technology and all the miracles science has created. The key aspect of the intellectual center is that its primary work is the manipulation of symbols therefore all subjective experience in this center is derivative as opposed to experience in the other two centers which is experienced directly.
This observation is critically important to the question at hand because many people take experience in the mental center to be “real”. That is many people forget that all experience that occurs in language is symbolic and a symbol represents something else but, it is not the thing itself. In an objective sense the symbol may grossly distort or omit critical aspects of the thing being symbolized. The more complex the thing being symbolized, the more likely it is that the symbol will be inaccurate.
Take for example, the miraculous potential of human awareness. No one would seriously contend that our current psychology or religion has a definitive description of this phenomenon. Yet it is probably safe to say that the symbol most likely to be used by almost everyone to stand for the miracle of human awareness is their own self-image. This confusion has been described as mistaking the map for the territory. In my opinion this simile is rather benign. The more fervent a person’s belief in their own self image the more likely it is that they will be vulnerable to belief and/or conduct inimical to their own evolution and creation in general.
Objectively one’s self-image is the symbol which results from the accumulation of experiences and our own and other people’s opinions about us. Frequently a person can mistake this symbol for “my true self”. Often a person whose belief about him or herself is predominantly in the mental center will define themselves as a plumber or a lawyer or a Christian or some other social role. A person whose self image is predominantly in their emotional center will often define themselves as “I Am”.
This fundamental confusion between self image the symbol and self as integrated aspect of creation is ironic because selfhood is the symbol most people will spend the most time and effort upholding. This notion of self as self image is the genesis of the Hindu concept of maya a Sanskrit word which means illusion or delusion. Unfortunately sometimes believing in something that cannot be experienced through the five senses is a true religious experience. Confusion between maya and authentic spirituality can be clarified by remembering that anything as vast and unknowable as the Creator can only be approached through intuition a function of our emotional center. This is why Orthodox Jews will not speak or write the word God. Similarly the first aphorism in The Book of Tao states the Tao of which can be spoken is not the real Tao.[2] In physics objects composed of iron or copper can collect a magnetic charge by being placed in a field of electrical energy. Similarly both our mental and emotional centers can collect a charge of spiritual energy by being exposed to experiences which promote belief. The energy of belief can be an extremely powerful force in a human being.
This is so for at least two reasons. First, belief can act as a pronounced inspiration. Examples are countless but, consider the number and majesty of the world’s holy buildings inspired by various conceptions of the Creator.
Second, our beliefs have a controlling influence on our perceptions. In short, we perceive what we believe.
The intellectual center proceeds by way of reasoning from a premise. Once a person accumulates a self-image that includes a belief in something, that belief will serve as the premise from which reasoning proceeds. If, for example, the premise is that true religion requires orthodoxy, then it is not too hard to see how coercive means to encourage adherence could seem to be a good idea. That is the mental center using only logic could come to this rather awful, but logical, conclusion. Only the emotional center is equipped with the necessary attributes to act as a containment vessel to properly channel the powerful potential of belief accumulating in a human being. Growth of the energy of belief in the emotional center is in accord with creation and will coalesce as an energetic field because this center contains the mustard seed. If the field reaches a critical mass it will allow this energetic agglutination to survive the death of our physical body. This is what it means to be born again[3] and was the mechanism of the resurrection.
Belief manifesting in the intellectual center is the esoteric meaning of the Biblical house built upon sand as this condition has disastrous consequences for individual evolution. In other words belief, no matter how fervently held, if located in the intellectual center will dissipate with our physical body. It will not coalesce as an energetic field because the intellectual center does not contain the mustard seed.
The idea that we are three brained beings is the psychic operator’s manual which can be used to untie Psychology’s Gordian Knot and explain virtually all human behavior. The widespread acceptance of this metaphor has miraculous potential to promote a quantum leap in our understanding of our potential as spiritual beings, our individual self - knowledge and concomitant social evolution.
Belief manifesting in the wrong that is intellectual center, is the consistent explanation for atrocities committed in the name of religion.
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[1] Luke 13 : 18-19
[2]The Tao Te Ching or Book of Tao is the seminal work of Taoism one of the 6 great world religions. It was composed or compiled between 300-500 BC. The legend is that the author Lao-Tzu was elderly and prepared to leave his village to go to the mountains and die. The leaders barred the gates until he compiled his wisdom. The legend is probably apochcryphal. Tao is usually translated to English as “the Way” which I understand to be in accord with creation. [2]
[3] John 3: 3-8 This is the passage where Jesus tells Nicodemus in verse 3 “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”. Nicodemus goes onto to ask but, how can an old man be born again? Jesus answers in verse 5&6 “Verily, verily I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Obviously, Jesus is attempting to imply a different state of matter. Since the general acceptance of the theory of relativity there are two states of matter, energy and mass or in Jesus’ terms flesh and spirit.
Also cf. John 14: 20 “At that day ye shall know that I am in my father, and ye in me, and I in you.”
We know from Sir Isaac Newton that two (or three) objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time again clearly implying different states of matter.