Whenever a better adapted form of life appears during evolution, the old form of life from which it arose is doomed. In a sense, a superior variant is a traitor to its own kind for, given time, it will eliminate its own antecedents. Instinctive behaviour is fundamentally goal-driven and goal-oriented. This is why it conveys such a strong impression of purpose (...) to bring out the inner nature of instinct, we can recap it thus: eating and drinking equals self-maintenance; fighting or fleeing equals self-preservation and reproduction equals self-continuation. We possess all these instincts; they are our ‘original sin’ – the genetic memory of our animal ancestry. However, the selective action pattern of each instinct does not, in the human case, take place in a mindless mechanical automaton like a thermostat. The chemical states associated with each instinct register in our conscious awareness as feelings’. (‘The Death of Forever; A New Future for Human Consciousness’; By Darryl Reanney; Teacher of microbiology and biochemistry, University of Canterbury. N. Z., LaTrobe University, Australia. Publisher: Longman 1991 ISBN 0 582 87054-2)

MARK: Did I mention conjecture anywhere? Richard, would you comment on this? In particular the instincts in a newborn human ... when, where, how?

RICHARD: ‘When’? At conception. ‘Where’? At the top of the brain-stem where it joins the base of the skull. ‘How’? The evolutionary result of maybe 50,000 years (Home Sapiens) or 100,000 years (Homo Erectus) of operation of the survival mechanism. (Given that these tens of thousands of years that biologists, anthropologists, palaeontologists and their ilk toss around with aplomb are highly speculative figures).

Those people, who have dedicated themselves to the particular type of research that painstakingly looks into these matters, have located at least four basic emotions in what is variously called the ‘primitive brain’ or the ‘lizard brain’ or the ‘reptilian brain’, which is located at the top of the brain-stem of all sentient creatures. This is regardless of whether the creature has a developed ‘bigger brain’ – like the human cerebral cortex – over the top of it or not. These basic instinctual passions are fear and aggression and nurture and desire ... there are more but scientists tend to disagree about matters scientific according to what school or discipline they are working in. For example: fear.

I have recently been browsing the work of Mr. Joseph LeDoux, who writes:

• [quote]: ‘the brain has multiple memory systems (...) explicit (conscious) memories mediated by the hippocampus and other aspects of the temporal lobe memory system [and] implicit (unconscious) memories mediated by the amygdala and its neural connections. Only by taking these systems apart in the brain have neuroscientists been able to figure out that these are different kinds of memory, rather than one memory with multiple forms of expression (...) it has been possible, through studies of experimental animals, to map out in great detail just how the fear system of the brain works. Although much of the research has involved laboratory rats, there have also been studies of a variety of other mammals. Remarkably, the results in all these species lead to the same conclusion. Learning and responding to stimuli that warn of danger involves neural pathways that send information about the outside world to the amygdala, which determines the significance of the stimulus and triggers emotional responses, like freezing or fleeing, as well changes in the inner workings of the body’s organs and glands. There is also evidence that the amygdala of reptiles and birds has similar functions.

The implication of these findings is that early on (perhaps since dinosaurs ruled the earth, or even before) evolution hit upon a way of wiring the brain to produce responses that are likely to keep the organism alive in dangerous situations. The solution was so effective that it has not been messed with much, and works pretty much the same in rats and people, as well as many if not all other vertebrate animals. Evolution seems to have gone with an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ rule when it comes to the fear system of the brain (...) research into the brain mechanisms of fear help us understand why emotional conditions are so hard to control. Neuro-anatomists have shown that the pathways that connect the emotional processing system of fear, the amygdala, with the thinking brain, the neocortex, are not symmetrical – the connections from the cortex to the amygdala are considerably weaker than those from the amygdala to the cortex. This may explain why, once an emotion is aroused, it is so hard for us to turn it off at will’. (‘The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life’; Copyright © Joseph LeDoux 1996; Publisher: Touchstone Books (Reprint edition March 1998); ISBN: 0684836599).

Despite dealing with people’s feelings every day, few therapists can give more than a basic explanation of what exactly instinctual passion is (what neurobiologists call ‘emotion’), and how it influences human functioning. Evolutionary biology plays a strong role in what Mr. Joseph LeDoux calls ‘the emotional brain’, those emotional drives which are inherited from humans’ prehistoric ancestors, such that conscious (explicit) emotional experience can be easily seen as higher-order forms of the sub-conscious survival instinctual (implicit) passions ... if one examines oneself moment-to moment.

One critic of his book ‘The Emotional Brain’ wrote:

• ‘LeDoux, a neuroscience researcher, shows that our emotions are generated by separate independent neuro systems which work unconsciously; believe it or not, we do NOT run because we are afraid, but rather we are afraid because we run. He also shows that the emotional systems have a much greater impact on our rational conscious than the rational conscious has on the emotional systems. Passion rules reason. This has tremendous implications for the current thinking in psychology/ psychiatry (although they will be slow to pick up on it). And it explains why man has so much angst, why we don’t learn from history, why man is so brutal’.

Another critic wrote:

• ‘Joseph LeDoux, a professor at the Center for Neural Science at New York University, has written the most comprehensive examination to date of how systems in the brain work in response to emotions, particularly fear. Among his fascinating findings is the work of amygdala structure within the brain. The amygdala mediates fear and other responses and actually processes information more quickly than other parts of the brain, allowing a rapid response that can save our lives before other parts of the brain have had a chance to react’.

And another:

• ‘More than any other researcher, LeDoux has put the amygdala two nubbins of neural tissue (one on either side of the brain) – at the center of what he calls the Wheel of Fear. Located near the center of the skull, the amygdala belongs to an archaic part of the brain, a part found in birds and reptiles, often referred to as the ‘limbic system’.

Mr. Stephen S. Hall wrote in the New York Times, February 28, 1999 :

• ‘LeDoux is not the only biologist to have homed in on the amygdala. Bruce Kapp of the University of Vermont started by studying one of the signature aspects of fear, changes in heart rate, and worked back to the brain. Beginning in 1979, he focused on the part of the brain stem that controls heart rate in rabbits. Following the nerve filaments like a spent fuse back into the brain, he discovered that these fibers lead to the amygdala. Not only that, they also lead to a small hive of related nerve cells in the amygdala, a bit larger than the head of a pin, known as the central nucleus. What was found to be true in rabbits, and later in rats, now appears to be true in humans as well. The central nucleus is the part of your brain that instantaneously looses the hounds of fear when you hear a loud bang or feel an earthquake. Nerves running out from this little knot of excitation carry the messages that control heart rate, blood pressure, sweating, respiration, freezing, increased jumpiness – all the engines that get revved in a fearful situation. But the wiring doesn’t stop there. Other nerve fibers from the amygdala thread their way back (or ‘project’) into the upper parts of the brain, to regions that control the release of stress hormones (which may play a major role in the reign of irrational fears), to the cortex and to sensory areas’.

Mr. Joseph LeDoux’s laboratory continues to investigate the workings of the brain ... and they maintain a web page that may be worth a visit (although it takes some wading through). Vis.: www.cns.nyu.edu/home/ledoux/

Mr. Daniel Goleman has written:

• ‘A view of human nature that ignores the power of emotions is sadly shortsighted. The very name ‘Homo Sapiens’, the thinking species, is misleading in light of the new appreciation and vision of the place of emotion in our lives that science now offers. As we all know from experience, when it comes to shaping our decisions and our actions, feeling counts every bit as much – and often more – than thought. We have gone too far in emphasising the value and import of the purely rational – of what IQ measures – in human life. Intelligence can come to nothing when the emotions hold sway’. (‘Emotional Intelligence’ Copyright © 1995 by Daniel Goleman; Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2 Soho Square, London W1V 6HB; ISBN 0 7475 2803 6).

This is a clear statement of fact: ‘Intelligence can come to nothing when the emotions hold sway’. There is a wealth of information both in print and on the Internet ... which all reinforces what I wrote in ‘Richard’s Journal’ some years ago: ‘Humankind is poised on the cusp of the dawning of a fresh era; an era wherein an evolution in the brain-stem is beginning to happen. The seat of the instincts, tentatively located in the popularly named ‘reptilian brain’, is capable of undergoing a mutation. No longer will blind nature have to operate; the perpetuation of the species will become a matter of lucid thought and personal choice. No longer will vicious wars of group survival be necessary. Already, with the advent of mutually assured destruction because of nuclear capability, people are questioning the advisability of war as a means of settling disputes. The apprehension of a cataclysmic end to human life has shaken the habitual and apathetic ‘human’ complacency to such an extent that the mind is now ready to be receptive to something entirely new in human history’.

I do consider that these are exciting times to be living in.

RICHARD: There is that truism that states: ‘We are all unique’. I say ‘truism’ deliberately, for I am immediately reminded of that scene in ‘The Life Of Brian’ where Brian addresses the crowd saying: ‘You are all individuals’. The crowd roars back in unison: ‘We are all individuals’. Down the back a lone voice cries out: ‘I’m not!’ Of course, the Monty Python crew were making a social comment, when they wrote that scene, about the conditioned identity of the average citizen when it comes to following a spiritual leader, but one can consider whether it holds well for humankind at large. Human beings are all born with the same basic instincts and, no matter which culture one was socialised into being a member of, all peoples throughout the world have the same emotions and passions. Anger and forbearance, for instance, is anger and forbearance wherever it lives. There is no difference at root between English anger and forbearance and American anger and forbearance and African anger and forbearance and so on. Or love and hatred, enmity and alliance, jealousy and acceptance ... whatever the emotion or passion may be, they all have a global incidence.

RESPONDENT: Basic emotions seem to be universal indeed.

RICHARD: The ‘basic emotions’ not only ‘seem to be universal’, they are unambiguously universal ... and have been demonstrated to be so in the many, many scientific studies around the world. These ‘basic emotions’ (like fear and aggression and nurture and desire) are the hallmark of virtually any sentient being ... they are blind nature’s instinctual software package genetically encoded into the germ-cells of the spermatozoa and the ova. And these survival instincts are what has enabled us to be born at all; they are what has enabled us to be here today after multiple generations of the development of the evolutionary ‘weeding out’ process of the ‘survival of the most fitted to the environment’ natural selection hypothesis first publicly proposed by Mr. Charles Darwin and Mr. A. R. Wallace in 1858. Their simultaneous publishing of their account of evolution was, says the Oxford Dictionary somewhat dryly, ‘to the consternation of theologians’ ... the same-same response that Mr. Galileo Galilei faced in 1610.

Yet peoples today – 141 years later – are still in massive denial of this oh-so-obvious common animal ancestry. Many is the person who has protested to me that ‘I am not an animal’ ... thus shutting the door on their investigation into what it is to be a human being living in the world as it is with people as they are. What a shame, what a pity ... no, what a sin it is to persist so tenaciously in holding on to ‘being’ – which is but the end-product of all animosity and anguish through the aeons – when this actual world, which is so perfectly pure, is right under one’s nose.

To be here now, intimately here at this very moment, is a satisfaction and fulfilment unparalleled in the annals of history.

ALAN: So, if ‘I’ believe ‘I’ actually exist, ‘I’ must believe that ‘I’ came from somewhere ‘out there’

RICHARD: If anything ‘I’ came from ‘back there’ in the biological hereditary and very earthy past (hence all the atavistic fears when one starts to break free from all the cultural mores). Why is the belief in ‘out there’ so strong (in the face of all the empirical evidence) would you say? I am genuinely interested ... I cannot find this out for myself as the instinctual connection has vanished.

ALAN: O.K. let’s have a go. What I was pursuing was an intellectual exploration and logical examination of the facts surrounding the belief that ‘I’ actually exist, which led me to the conclusion that, if ‘I’ do actually exist, ‘I’ must have come from ‘somewhere’. I (wrongly) jumped to the commonly accepted belief that ‘I’ must have come from ‘out there’. I now understand what you are saying and agree wholeheartedly – I came from ‘‘back there’ in the biological hereditary and very earthy past’. ‘I’ have always existed (or for a very long time, anyway) and will always exist (unless humanity comes to its senses – literally), though not of course as this body called Alan. Blindingly obvious, in fact!

RICHARD: Is it not amazing how obvious – and how simple – all this is? Peoples have been unnecessarily complicating what is a rather straight-forward biological issue, when all is said and done.

ALAN: But, to accept this as a fact, it is necessary to accept that ‘I’ do not actually exist – the person (as opposed to the body) called ‘Alan’ is not a separate individual – and ‘my’ world falls apart – all ‘I’ am is these biologically inherited instincts.

RICHARD: Nothing more and nothing less ... except imagination and illusion leading to fantasy and delusion.

ALAN: Which puts me in mind of a line from a Moody Blues song – ‘I’m more than that, I know I am – at least, I think I must be’. Only one mistake in that line – it should be ‘believe’, not ‘think’.

RICHARD: It is amazing how humble one can be about ‘knowing’ that one is god-on-earth!

ALAN: Similarly it should be ‘I believe, therefore I am’.

RICHARD: Yea verily ... Mr. René Descartes’ bequest lives on to this present day. I had an edifying correspondence with someone (supposedly with a University degree in Philosophy) on another Mailing List some time ago.

ALAN: If ‘I’ do not believe ‘I’ actually exist, then ‘I’ will not exist. ‘I’ have to believe in ‘my’ existence, otherwise what am I left with. And what is there to be afraid of? If ‘I’ do not actually exist – and it is only ‘me’ who feels fear – then fear does not actually exist. None of it actually exists – Wow. So, I have not got far on answering your question – except to say ‘I’ have to believe in ‘out there’. If ‘I’ do not, I have to accept that ‘I’ do not actually exist.

RICHARD: Hmm ... I guess I was rather expectant that you may be able to experience the atavistic reality of coming from ‘back there’, once the belief in ‘out there’ disappeared, and personally verify what Mr. Joseph LeDoux’s empirical data is demonstrating.

It may also have the effect of applying some ‘back pressure’ when the enticement of the PCE wanes.

RICHARD: I discovered that it was a physically inherited cause (a genetically inherited instinctual animal ‘self’) that created the problem of the human condition and thus promote a physical solution (extinction of instinctual ‘being’ itself) derived from my personal experience.

RESPONDENT: Please, can you extend your meaning about ‘and thus promote a physical solution (extinction of instinctual ‘being’ itself)’. Please, what is your approximation, what do you mean by ‘a physical solution (extinction of instinctual ‘being’ itself) derived from my personal experience’. Feel free to express as you like, this is to much serious for me, ‘agree or disagree’ will be only my business but I will thanks a lot any personal approach on this point.

RICHARD: In my investigations I first started by examining thought, thoughts and thinking ... then very soon moved on to examining feelings (first the emotions and then the deeper feelings). When I dug down into these passions (into the core of ‘my’ being then into ‘being’ itself) I stumbled across the instincts ... and found the origin of not only the affective faculty but the psyche itself. I found ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’ ... which is the instinctual rudimentary animal self common to all sentient beings (otherwise mistakenly known as the ‘original face’ and is what gives rise to the feeling of ‘oneness’ with all other sentient beings). This is a very ancient genetic memory.

Being a ‘self’ is because the only way into this world of people, things and events is via the human spermatozoa fertilising the human ova ... thus every human being is endowed, by blind nature, with the basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. These passions are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self ... the base consciousness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that all sentient beings have. The human animal – with its unique ability to be aware of its own death – transforms this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary animal ‘self’ into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and from this core of ‘being’ the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. That this process is aided and abetted by the human beings who were already on this planet when one was born – which is conditioning and programming and is part and parcel of the socialising process – is but the tip of the ice-burg and not the main issue at all. There is much, much more to an investigation into the human condition than ‘the thinker is the thought’, because (to put it in the same lingo) the ‘feeler’ is the feelings ... and the feelings are, as the root of the psyche, ‘being’ itself.

The physical solution (extinction of instinctual ‘being’ itself) will not eventuate unless the physically inherited cause (a genetically inherited instinctual animal ‘self’) that created the problem of the human condition is intimately experienced. To proceed from a sound basis, one starts with facts: to be alive (not dead) and awake (not asleep) and conscious (not unconscious) and aware and perceiving (and maybe thinking, remembering, reflecting and proposing considered action) is the human mind that every human being is born with and, as such, is similar around the globe and through all generations. Intimate access to the activity of each mind is personal (as opposed to public) but the basic activities of the mind are not individual (‘individual’ as distinguished from others by qualities of its own). This neuronal activity – consciousness itself – is what the human mind is and thus, contrary to popular belief, consciousness is not its content (content as in conditioning) but the very neuronal activity itself.

Because, apart from awareness and perception and thought being what consciousness is, there is the affective feelings (emotions and passions and calentures) such as the instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire to consider. Are they not basic traits that every human being is born with and consequently also similar? Or are they the result of conditioning and therefore the ‘contents of consciousness’? What about malice and sorrow and any of derivatives of malice and sorrow – as a broad generalisation, ‘malice’ is what one does to others (resentment, anger, hatred, rage, sadism and so on) and ‘sorrow’ (sadness, loneliness, melancholy, grief, masochism and so on) is what one does to oneself – and the compensatory love and compassion and any of the derivatives of love and compassion that arise out of the basic instincts? Are they not latent traits that every human comes into ‘being’ with and thus are also similar because, whatever the emotion or passion or calenture may be, they all have a global incidence. Or are they the result of conditioning and therefore the ‘contents of consciousness’? What about such affectively-based activity as imagination, intuition, visualisation, conceptualisation, believing, trusting, hoping, having faith and so forth – giving rise to epiphenomenon like prescience, clairvoyance, telepathy, divination and other psychic effects – are they not embryonic traits that every human being comes into ‘being’ with and thus are similar as well? Or are they the result of conditioning and therefore the ‘contents of consciousness’?

Can it at least be clear that the obvious ‘contents of consciousness’ which are the result of conditioning, such as the gender, racial and era beliefs, truths, morals, ethics, principles, values, ideals, theories, customs, traditions, superstitions and all the other schemes and dreams, are what imposes a ‘collective mind’ imprint? Yet this imprinted ‘collective mind’ (all the gender, racial and era beliefs, truths, morals, ethics, principles, values, ideals, theories, customs, traditions, superstitions and all the other schemes and dreams) would not be able to have the tenacious hold that it has if the human brain was indeed the ‘Tabular Rasa’ brain that so many peoples believe they are born with. All the gender, racial and era beliefs, truths, morals, ethics, principles, values, ideals, theories, customs, traditions, superstitions and all the other schemes and dreams have such a persistent grip only because of the powerful energy of the genetically inherited instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire that stretch back to the dawn of the human species ... which passions have given rise to a rudimentary animal ‘self’ out of ‘being’ itself who is both savage (‘fear and aggression’) and tender (‘nurture and desire’).

Is it not obvious that all the animosity and anguish that has beset humankind throughout millennia comes from that which a lot deeper than ‘the thinker is the thought’ ... all the misery and mayhem stems from an animal energy which is much, much more powerful than thought, thoughts and thinking.

RICHARD: It is not thought that imputes a thinker. It is the passion engendered by the instinctual self in the reptilian brain that remains the real culprit.

RESPONDENT No. 22: It seems that passions or feelings are just changing phenomenon that seemingly arise and pass away in awareness just as thoughts. To label that ever-changing phenomenon as an instinctual self seems to be the addition of thought.

RESPONDENT: Richard, I agree with the above. To me you are very clear until you get to this instinct part – to me it’s fuzzy. Can you clarify?

RICHARD: I most certainly can ... it is rather simple, actually. But what is required is that one first acknowledges that this physical body and this physical world and this physical universe are actual. Actual as in tangible, corporeal, material, substantial, palpable. It requires that one comes to one’s senses – both figuratively and literally – and cease trying to understand life, the universe and what it is to be a human being through religious or spiritual eyes. This is not a metaphysical matter ... it is very, very earthy.

Those people, who have dedicated large parts of their waking hours devoted to the particular type of physical research that painstakingly looks into these matters, have located at least four basic emotions in what is variously called the ‘primitive brain’ or the ‘lizard brain’ or the ‘reptilian brain’, which is located at the top of the brain-stem of all sentient creatures. This is regardless of whether the creature has a developed ‘bigger brain’ – like the human cerebral cortex – over the top of it or not. These basic passions are fear and aggression and nurture and desire ... there are more but scientists tend to disagree about matters scientific according to what school or discipline they are working in. After all, they are fallible, ego-ridden and soul-bound human beings trapped in the human condition like everybody else, and are seeking to find a way through all this mess that we humans are born into via the scientific method.

Experiments with electronic probes on either reptiles – not having a bigger brain – or mammals – having a bigger brain – have demonstrated repeatedly that by touching various locatable areas of this ‘reptilian brain’, these emotions can be triggered at command. Thus the hapless animal will switch from trembling fear to rabid desire in the twinkling of an eye ... merely by applying the electrode to another area. Similarly, nurturing can be abruptly replaced by aggression ... again by moving the electrode. This has been demonstrated again and again with predictable results. Thus it is a fact.

So, beginning with a fact and not a premise, we can reliably ascertain that these instincts are what we are born with. Consequently, all sentient beings have, at the very least, a rudimentary sense of ‘self’ and ‘other’ ... and I am not suggesting for a moment that any reptile or mammal has an ‘I’ or a ‘me’. I mean it in the sense that an animal displays behaviour that indicates that there is an awareness of its physical form as being separate from the form of the world about ... which a tree, for example, does not display. This has been tested with monkeys, for instance, where a mirror is placed in the cage and the monkey first looks behind the mirror to find the – apparently there – ‘other’ monkey. After a while, an understanding that is observable dawns upon the luckless creature ... and it starts pulling faces at itself and otherwise enjoying the clearly demonstrable fun that comes as a result of the monkey knowing that it is its own reflection it is looking at. In other words: a sense of self.

With the hormonal power of the feelings engendered, one feels that a ‘me’ exists ... generally felt to be somewhere in the region of the heart. This is the ‘me’ that I consistently call the soul ... for convenience. This feeling – and feelings are so powerful that they can override intelligence – makes one think that an ‘I’ exists ... generally located in the head. This ‘I’, which for convenience I consistently call the ego, comes to realise that it is the spanner in the works when it comes to the ever-pressing matter of peaceful co-existence with other members of its species. ‘I’, realising (thinking) that ‘I’ am but an illusion in the mind, realise (feel) that ‘my’ true identity is to be found in those prior existent feelings (Zen Buddhism’s ‘Original Face’) and can, by dint of great endeavour, dissolve and become ‘Me’.

This ‘Me’ – usually capitalised to indicate divinity – experiences an oceanic feeling of oneness and unity with all of creation. This gives rise to the popular notion in the East: ‘I am everything and everything is Me’. The West has something similar: ‘I am That I am’ ... but this appellation is reserved for ‘God Men’ who are conveniently long-dead. Prior to the recent influx of Eastern Philosophy, if one realised that ‘I am God’, one would have been institutionalised ... and, to some degree, rightly so. One has stepped out of an illusion, only to wind up living in a delusion. However, the trouble with people who discard the god of Christianity is that they do not realise that by turning to the Eastern spirituality they have effectively jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Eastern spirituality is religion ... merely in a different form to what people in the West have been raised to believe in. Eastern philosophy sounds so convincing to the Western mind that is desperately looking for answers. The Christian conditioning actually sets up the situation for a thinking person to be susceptible to the esoteric doctrines of the East.

It is sobering to realise that the intelligentsia of the West are eagerly following the East down the slippery slope of striving to attain to a self-seeking Divine Immortality ... to the detriment of life on earth. ‘Centre-less Being’, for example, is simply the Eastern term for ‘God’; thus any wisdom designated ‘Unitary Awareness’ translates easily as ‘God’s Word’ ... in Western terminology. At the end of the line there is always a god of some description, lurking in disguise, wreaking its havoc with its ‘Teachings’. Have you ever been to India to see for yourself the results of what they claim are tens of thousands of years of devotional spiritual living? I have, and it is hideous. If it were not for the appalling suffering engendered it would all be highly amusing.

Of course, it is possible to be actually free of the human condition ... but it is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the ‘tried and true’.