Power Up Your Brain (5 page)

If Hameroff is right about microtubules exhibiting quantum mechanical events inside your brain cells, then consider the possibilities and potentials that you are capable of, especially when you turn off thoughts of fear, sex, greed, or incessant worry. You could have the power to engage in nonlocal interactions, to access information from across the galaxy, and to draw upon the lessons from your past, your future, or even from the collective past and future of humanity—just as enlightened meditators and shamans do and have done. As the Dalai Lama states, “Those on a high level of spiritual experience have . . . developed meditative concentration to the point of becoming clairvoyant and generating miracles.”
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THE BRAIN AND ENLIGHTENMENT

So with all this expanded brain power, what are we striving for? In the East, enlightenment has traditionally been associated with qualities such as generosity, compassion, peaceful acceptance, and an experience of oneness with all creation. In the fiercely individualistic West, our rather vague notion of enlightenment suggests an acceptance of the world as it is, or of discovering how we can change it for the better. Enlightenment for us also implies the common longing for novelty, exploration, and creativity, as personified by the explorers who venture into space.

If we take the Eastern qualities of enlightenment out of their religious context and place them in the realm of biological science, we find that they are attributes associated with the activation of the prefrontal cortex—the newest part of the human brain. On functional MRI scans, people who meditate regularly are shown to have developed brains that are
wired
differently than the brains of people who don’t meditate. They are better able to remain calm and stress-free, live in peace, and practice compassion. Curiously, their prefrontal cortex is the most active region in their brain during the states they describe as samadhi, or enlightenment. His Holiness the Dalai Lama describes enlightenment as “a state of freedom not only from the counterproductive emotions that drive the process of cyclic existence, but also from the predispositions established in the mind by those afflictive emotions.”
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The Dalai Lama is suggesting that enlightenment is a state of freedom from destructive emotions and from the limiting beliefs and repetitive behaviors created by these emotions.

Generosity and compassion arise only when the prefrontal cortex is able to throttle back the more prehistoric regions of the brain. Yet, for the prefrontal cortex to create functional pathways for joy and peace, the entire body and brain need to be healthy, fed with the proper nutrients, and trained with an inner discipline. We must heal our bodies and minds to empower the prefrontal cortex—the new brain, which is biologically programmable for bliss, extraordinary longevity, peace, and regeneration. For too long, this brain region has been kept offline, silenced by the same forces—scarcity, violence, and trauma—from which it promises to deliver us.

Once this new region in the brain is brought online, brain synergy is possible. Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Engineers are familiar with how synergy operates. The tensile strength of stainless steel, for example, is nearly ten times greater than the tensile strength of iron, even though stainless steel is basically iron with a minute amount of carbon added to it. Both carbon and iron, by themselves, are brittle and flake easily. Yet, when combined, they make an extraordinarily strong material.

Brain synergy signifies a neurocomputer whose circuits are all turned on, tuned in, and operating collaboratively, each region attending to its functions—much as the heart attends to circulating blood while the lungs attend to respiration—creating a system that cannot be defined or even described by its component parts.

ATTAINING SYNERGY

People in the East say the path to brain synergy is through the practice of meditation. Shamans use the term
clear perception
. In yoga, it is called samadhi, the highest stage of meditation, oneness with the universe. Regardless of the term used to describe the process, the challenge is to
dis-identify with your limited sense of self
that was created by destructive emotions
.

Think of a lake. When the waters of the lake are still, it reflects everything around it perfectly. You see pine trees on the other side or a rising moon as mirror images. But when even the slightest breeze crosses the lake, the surface reflects only itself. It, in effect, says, “Look at me.” Similarly, when your mind is disrupted by uninvited thoughts or emotions or when it is distracted by television or a barrage of commercial advertising or social gossip or trivial banter, it removes itself from connection with the greater universe. It interrupts your deep, innate desire to perceive the grand mystery of creation—and be part of it. Shamans believe that, to interact with the vast information fields of the biosphere, you must enter a state of clear perception. Your mind must be at peace in order to perceive the true nature of the world and not merely the reflection of your own below-the-surface drama created by your destructive emotions.

A teaching story from the North American Plains Indians tells of a young man who comes to his grandfather and says, “There are two wolves inside of me. One wants to kill and destroy, and the other one wants to make peace and bring beauty. Which one will win, Grandfather?” The old man answers, “Whichever one you feed.”

Likewise, you have a choice: To feed the wolf of chaos and confusion, the wolf that devours your positive thinking, destroys your sense of self-worth, and consumes your entire being. Or to feed the wolf of inner peace that will enable your mind to become like the beautiful, reflective surface of a still lake and access the attributes and gifts of your higher brain.

Once you heal your emotional brain and create the state of brain synergy, the gifts of your prefrontal cortex will come online naturally. You will no longer need to pursue happiness through artificial means, because
happiness will arise from you
with ease. For the prefrontal cortex, happiness is not the result of good luck or happenstance. No, happiness is a treasure of clear perception that will be eternally yours.

CHAPTER 2

THE POWERFUL MIND

In our work—both as an anthropologist who dedicated many years to investigating the healing practices of Amazon and Andean sages, and as a neurologist who has spent decades treating individuals suffering from degenerative brain diseases—we have long been intrigued by the power of the mind in achieving unbelievable feats, both physical and mental. We’ve met and studied with sages who were able to achieve extraordinary brilliance, inner peace, and creativity. We’ve heard of Tibetan monks who are able to meditate overnight on an ice-covered mountain without freezing to death, dusting the snow from their naked shoulders as the sun rises.

The full power of the mind is still not completely understood, but we witness examples of it on a regular basis.

HEALTH AND THOUGHTS

Years ago, people saw support groups and stress management techniques as harmless adjuncts to the medical treatment of those with serious illnesses. Recently, however, research has shown that patients who use techniques such as mindful meditation not only are less stressed emotionally by their illness but also experience better physical health. This research is, in fact, showing how thoughts, beliefs, and emotions influence the health of the body.

In the July 2009 issue of
Scientific American
, the neurologist Martin Portner describes the case of Gretchen, a participant in a 2005 study on the viability of a testosterone patch to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder, a condition in which a person’s libido is so diminished that he or she feels no sexual interest or attraction. Testosterone, a hormone produced by the testes in males and the ovaries in females, is associated with sexual arousal. Gretchen had felt no sexual desire ever since undergoing an operation that removed her ovaries.

After wearing the patch for 12 weeks, Gretchen felt the stirrings of desire again. “It can only be because of that patch,” she reported. Shortly thereafter she was able to make love with her husband again and experience an orgasm for the first time in years. But the most amazing part of the story is that Gretchen, unbeknownst to her, was part of the study’s control group and the patch given to her was a placebo with no testosterone in it whatsoever.

The return of Gretchen’s sexual appetite was clearly related to a change in her neural wiring, some literal
change of mind
of which she was not even cognitively aware. Yet, it happened. And that change was felt throughout her body.

Most of us are more familiar with psychosomatic disease than with psychosomatic wellness. We know that we can worry ourselves sick, and we suspect that we can laugh ourselves to health. Even so, medicine gives little credence to the idea that psychosomatic health can be achieved. After all, we cannot knowingly administer a placebo to ourselves, in the same way that it is impossible to tickle yourself. Yet societies that rely on traditional healers— medicine men and women—have long understood the power of the mind to either heal or kill. At times, shamans resort to great pomp and ceremony to mobilize the mind’s ability to heal the body. Their complex ceremonies activate the prefrontal cortex to create health.

Yet, in modern societies, we have largely declared these practices to be superstition or quackery; “placebo” is even a term of dismissal in everyday conversation. The irony is that our modern-day “ceremony” consists of giving the patient a sugar pill, a tablet that contains no pharmaceutical ingredients. Testing new medicines against a placebo is a common practice for determining the efficacy of all medications, which is, in effect, strong evidence that the mind alone does have the power to soothe inflammation, calm nerves, and influence organs and tissues of the body to return to a state of health.

Studies have shown, for example, that a sugar pill can be as effective as morphine in 56 percent of people.
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Yet, even though the sugar pill is the most carefully studied “medication” by manufacturers and researchers of pharmaceutical medicine, it is the one least appreciated or recognized as a potential cure.

A friend of ours once suggested that if we wanted to get rich we should press chicken soup into pill form and sell it over the counter with the name “Placebo,” as we could make legitimate scientific claims that it would be almost as effective as expensive medications in treating a host of complaints, ranging from headaches to erectile dysfunction.

The placebo effect and psychosomatic wellness are the result of tapping into the healing potential of the mind, which has been common practice in humankind for thousands of years. By dismissing the placebo effect, Western medicine has, in reality, failed to investigate how this phenomenon can give us a glimpse into the immense power of the prefrontal cortex.

David:
Cancer? What Cancer?

As a trained neurologist, I’m intrigued by how I am often accused of practicing “nontraditional” medicine because, in addition to offering nutritional recommendations, our clinic’s protocols also incorporate such modalities as affirmations and meditation. The paradox is that these practices, or similar ones, have been a part of health care for thousands of years, and are thus “traditional” by definition.

In late 2007, a patient with a very serious health issue came to see me. “Marvin” was a 74-year-old man who had just returned from a top cancer treatment facility, where he was told to “get your affairs in order” because he had been diagnosed with aggressive pancreatic cancer that had already spread to the adjacent lymph nodes. Chemotherapy was an option, but the success rate, especially at his age, was almost zero percent. Given what modern medicine has to offer someone in Marvin’s condition, the cancer specialists had told him what they assessed to be the truth about his devastating illness: he had, at best, about six months to live.

Knowing how much of an impact beliefs have on physical health, I asked him if he truly believed that, and he replied, “Absolutely not!”—which was exactly the response I was hoping for.