The Self

The first time I read Carlos Castaneda's book A Separate Reality it sparked a week long debate with one of my college roommates, Fritz. He felt there was only one universal reality, much the same way Newton saw the universality of physics. Of course I had a contrary opinion. Even when the facts on the ground are indisputable, the moment they go through prism of perception the facts begin to transform into the subjective world of personal conceits and recollections. It was a more an Einstein like concept of everything being relative with the understanding that the more extreme the circumstances are around you, the more bizarre it will seem to the outside observer but could still feel perfectly normal to you.

It was a debate over the reality of perception itself. How are things like emotions, delusions, faith or hallucinations real? It easy to argue love is just a series of chemical reactions but when I'm with close friends and family that love feels real. Maybe it one of the reasons why love is the subject of a gazillion poems, songs and stories. It something that for now can only be described indirectly through an art form.

Years later Carlos Castaneda has been discredited as being full of crap but his books are still a good read. They are like Don Quixote charging at the wind mills. An adventure exploring the possibility there's something behind the hard cold realities of life.  Maybe it's magic, maybe it's a self appointed meaning, maybe it's a divine or a deeper understanding that all the good and evil in the world is locked up in the fleeting experiences of this short life.   

Fritz was never happy with this kind of thinking. He couldn't see fiction as a portal of truth and had to be reminded that propaganda is the art of turn facts into lies. Could all this difference of opinion just be a subtle variation of brain chemistry?  

Several new studies have come out on the neuroscience of identity. I have often joked that every artist that wants to become commercially successful needs to become a cult of personality. Ask your self would a Van Goth painting be worth so much if it wasn't connected to the story of Vincent the artist? If Don MacLean didn't write his song, if the movie Lust For Life wasn't made, if Vincent's brother Theo stopped trying to sell the paintings and burned all the letters they wrote to each other.... how would Vincent Van Goth be looked at today? Would he be just another crazy guy with an eye for color and his painting just curiosity pieces? Keep in mind Van Goth never sold a painting when he was alive because his contemporaries saw him as a crazy person that they didn't want to know.

 

Reading through one study it seems that our life experiences cause our bodies to produce a whole cascade of proteins, enzymes and neural transmitters that turn on and off genes, change the brain's structure and actual create the foundations of identify. This doesn't firmly prove the mind and soul are purely the "dance of atoms" but it makes it harder to imagine these things are outside and separate from our physical  being.

Another study is investigating the use of the street drug Special K, properly known as Ketamine, for the treatment of depression.  There have been some preliminary findings where Ketamine has had a profound positive affect. Most anti-depressants can take weeks to months before they start to relieve the symptoms as treatment with Ketamine have reversed depression in only a few hours. I want to be careful in making it sound like a miracle cure but it does me wonder how fragile the chemistry of the self can be.

In 2006 John Hopkins University did a double blind study on psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. The subjects in the experiment were 36 college educated adults with an average age of 46. None of them had a history of drug use.

One third of the subjects that got the psilocybin and not a placebo reported they had "was the single most spiritually significant moment of their lives".  Another third had similar feelings about the experience and would place it in the top five most significant events in their lives.  Fourteen months later in a follow up survey 79% of the subjects reported an increase in well being and life satisfaction.

With drugs you would expect the potential for dramatic changes in mental states but other studies have documented the power of prayer and meditation to mold the mind. A book to recommend Is Why God Won't Go Away, Brian Science And The Biology Of Belief by Andrew Newberg. There are several chapters where Buddhist Monks and Christian Nuns had their brains scanned to see what they have in common with each other and how their brains are different than ours. I only wish they had included a few artists into the mix to see if the structure of their brains were like the average person's or more like monks and nuns.  What I found most interesting was another experiment in the book where ordinary people had specific parts of their brains stimulated by magnetic fields. They reported to have very spiritual like experiences

Personally my prejudices make me believe that art is like a spiritual experience and it can profoundly  and fundamentally shape the mind and help create a better person.

That question about what is the essence of identify is still a thorny one. If Fritz was here, he would be upset with the idea that a human being can be reduced to a few genes and peptides. Once upon a time we were divine creatures in the Garden of Eden. After eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge knowing a little was not enough -but the curse in seeking knowledge is the more you know the darker and stranger things appear to be.

Back in 1996, the BBC broadcasted a four part mini-series titled Cold Lazarus. The story is set in a 24th century dystopian world. A cryogenic research lab had received a frozen head from the 20th century and start to retrieve the memories from the chemical signatures inside the brain.

The production is dated, the special effects are about as good as any episode of Doctor Who but the whole story does chip away at the big question -who are we? What is the real reality of human consciousness? A question that science can't answer yet but art can delve into. Art is compelled create an image where there are no defiant answers.