Functioning without silence: the mistake of the intellect
In 1969, when I was dumb and bold, I talked my way onto a crew hired to sail back to the mainland a boat that had under performed in the Trans-pacific yacht race. Two days out, after having made myself indispensable with carpentry and substituting for a seasick cook, they discovered I had no clue how to sail, and paired me to do my watch with the captain, a waterman in his forties who had survived the first solo-around-the-world race. He had capsized and didn't finish.
During the one month trip I studied him with fascination, noting his uncanny ability to simultaneously steer, navigate, watch for gusts on the water, trim sails, bark orders to me, all while nursing a coffee, chewing tobacco, singing a chanty and thoroughly enjoying himself. Years of culturing his nervous system to the sights, sounds and routines of the sea allowed him to effortlessly juggle all his critical tasks in chorus. It therefore came as no surprise to me that Takeo Watanabe and his group of neuroscientists at Boston University recently reported that people concentrating on numbers flashing across a screen were simultaneously and unwittingly learning about the movement of dots on a screen off to the side.
This study shows that we are able to process information through several cognitive pathways, not that doing so makes us more efficient or improves our lives. Marketers are certain to bombard us with even more subliminal messages and employers, educators, and parents may encourage more multitasking.
Vedic neuroscience, a branch of the Vedic literature affiliated with Ayurveda, the oldest science of medicine, is adamant about doing only one thing at a time. This science holds that problems such as poor memory and concentration, attention deficit and hyperactivity, anxiety neuroses and depression are caused in part by poor mental habits.
According to Vedic neuroscience, the three states of consciousness recognized by modern psychology - sleeping, dreaming and waking - are considered to be lower states of consciousness, not a true measure of human dignity and potential. A fourth state of consciousness, called turiya chetana in Sanskrit, is characterized by inner wakefulness without any content of consciousness such as thoughts, emotions and perceptions. This is the state of consciousness that we may be momentarily aware of as we slip into or out of sleep or in other moments, such as discovery or rapture, when we feel that everything goes still inside. It is this fourth state that we attempt to culture to be longer, more frequent and more systematic for patients in our practice when we teach them the Transcendental Meditation technique. Having experienced this state of pure wakefulness morning and evening in meditation practice, the individual enters into activity and naturally the inner silence disappears with the stresses and problems of the day.
In the fifth state of consciousness, called turiyatita chetana, the inner silence or pure wakefulness has been cultivated by regular meditation practice to the point that it cannot be overshadowed even by the most demanding tasks. Dipping one's nervous system into the silence and exposing it to the dynamic activity of the day is akin to dyeing a white cloth in a yellow dye and exposing it to the sun: the color fades except for a hint that remains. If one continues to dip it in the dye and expose it to the sun, eventually the color becomes fast. No matter how bright the sun, the color won't fade. This is the logic for the tradition of observing regularity in one's spiritual practices or meditation.
Like my captain, who had trained himself to maintain total awareness of all aspects of his boat, the sea and the weather while performing complex motor tasks, the human nervous system has the ability to maintain two distinct modes of consciousness simultaneously: activity and silence. More importantly, trying to function without the silence is the root cause of most disorders, both physical and mental, according to the medical text, Caraka Samhita. This state is called prajnaparadh, or the mistake of the intellect, because the intellect forgets in the midst of the hectic activity, that silence exists both in one's awareness and in nature, and that deluded intellect makes poor decisions about diet and lifestyle from a state of mind dominated by stress. Just as we recognize that sleep and dream deprivation creates hallucinations and irritability, Vedic neuroscience holds that deprivation of this state of silence, pure wakefulness, creates a condition in which an individual functions suboptimally. The person begins to formulate concepts and lifestyles that don't coincide with the reality that life is fundamentally effortless, royal and fulfilling.
How meditation cultivates the ability to simultaneously maintain the opposites states of silence and dynamism is remarkable. A thought settling down is like a wave settling on an ocean: just before it disappears it has become broad and expanded. Similarly, a thought settling down in our awareness becomes both subtler and more expanded. The mind observing this activity becomes more cultured in its ability to focus sharply while maintaining expanded awareness, just the qualities needed by people functioning at the highest levels of responsibility. In other words, Vedic neuroscience says that one should only attempt to do thing at a time, but that as one's nervous system evolves, one begins to function in two different modes.
One mode, pure wakefulness, becomes a silent witness of one's waking activity. This is the first stage of enlightenment. My own teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, has commented that the common spiritual practice of attempting to perform activity while trying to remember the higher Self is a waste of time and simply divides the mind. It may even be dangerous if one is performing delicate tasks, driving, and making decisions. One should just meditate twice a day and in between focus on the tasks at hand. Just as bad is the modern trend to teach yoga like an aerobics class, with music playing in the background, and usually with incense. The idea of yoga, which is a major therapeutic strategy of Ayurvedic medicine, is to bring the awareness into the body, onto the part being moved or stretched, and not to take it outward onto the other senses.
Children are helped in cultivating these cognitive abilities by learning complex motor tasks that involve a high degree of intellectual focus: playing music, typing, orienteering (a competition using a map and compass while running in the woods to find hidden control points). But encouraging multitasking in children may be one fast way to promote cognitive styles of mental functioning found in ADD. Kids today their homework wearing a Walkman with the TV on. On the other hand, an adult engaging a child with a simple song or game cultivates the habit of total focus. This is why Ayurveda says that culturing the mental habit of doing one thing at a time is at the same time the best way to gain academic, athletic, emotional as well as spiritual growth. Meditation, yoga, music lessons and time spent with an adult may turn out to be the quickest ticket off Ritalin.
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This information on "Functioning without silence: the mistake of the intellect" is in the "The Ayurvedic Path to Health" section of AyurvedaMed.com website. To return to the index page of this section, please click here.
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