No Self, No Problem - Waking up from the Dream of Thinking

Hello my friends, this is Deepak Chopra. I have the distinct honor and privilege of speaking to Chris Neibauer. Is that the right pronunciation? It's Neibauer. Neibauer. Chris Neibauer. Dr. Neibauer has written this wonderful book. It's called No Self, No Problem. How Neuropsychology is Catching Up to Buddhism. I just finished reading it. Very good read. I hope you will all get a copy and study it for yourself. Some very extraordinary insights. First of all, Chris, we'll post your bio and your history with the video. Thank you for joining this conversation this morning. Thank you. Our audience, we reach approximately 15 million by the time this thing is over in a few weeks. Our audience would love to know a little bit about your childhood, your background. I read most of it here and how you got into neuropsychology and ultimately writing this book. But I'm more curious right now about your background, your personal history, the death of your father, etc. So please, please share. Sure. So that's where it all sort of started with the death of my father. It all came on very unexpectedly and kind of threw me into a massive neurosis. I was really a mess. Death had become the enemy. I saw what it did to people. And every moment was fear of death. So even if I was talking to you right now, 80% of my mind would be spinning, thinking, am I going to die any second? And then how do you fight death? So I thought, well, what's his name? I think it was the French philosopher. I forget his name. He said, we're all on death row. The only uncertainty is the method of execution and the length of reprieve. So there we are. And it took me a while to figure that out. But I thought I thought it was something I could fight. And so I thought neuropsychology was a good way to go. I figured, well, this is fear. This is anxiety. I'm a complete neurotic mess. There's got to be some way to figure this out. And so I thought getting a PhD in psychology would work. And it really, it helps. The PhD in psychology, psychology studied the mind for such a long time. And to some degree, it really was helpful. But there was something missing. And that's when I got introduced to the philosophies of the East. And my main teacher was Alan Watts, and he took me to places I had never imagined. And I didn't realize that the mind that I was dealing with was just a small part of my existence. I thought at the time, it was the only existence I knew. And so I got so caught up in thinking and then trying to figure out how you solve a thinking problem with more thinking. And I just got deeper and deeper. And Eastern philosophy showed me so much more than I could have imagined. And the two ended up working together. And they complemented each other in such interesting ways that it was a while later, I had finished my PhD, I was actually a professor, and I was teaching classes. And one morning just got up and started writing. And it was just all this sort of came out of that. So tell us about the book. I've read it, but I want, in your own words, our audience to understand what the essential message of the book is. So most people are aware of the left and right brain. They know that, you know, even a kid, if they look at the brain, the most obvious thing about it is that there's a left and right half. And it almost got too popular in the neurosciences. And so people thought it was too simple. And science loves, like the thinking mind loves complexities. And so they said, well, this is just too simple. And so they sort of dismissed it. And then it's sort of made a comeback. Interestingly, just over the last maybe 10 years or so, with Ian McGilchrist has a very popular book. And, and for me, it was a very good way to explore the different worlds I was living in. So when I was in grad school, Monday through Friday, I was studying neuroscience. But then on weekends, I was studying Eastern philosophy. And so I found like, there were two worlds I was living in, and these mapped on so nicely to the processing of the left and right sides of the brain. And so even though the two sides of the brain have gone through an interesting story, I think it's becoming more convincing to people, when you talk to people, and they kind of connect with this, that you're living in two different worlds. And that maps so nicely to the left and right sides of the brain that, and when we know so much about left brain processing, because we live in a culture that is so dominated by that. And so in the book, what I do is I lay out all the workings of the left brain in the first part, so people can become more familiar with that. But then the second half, I think, is really the important part, because that's when we get into the processing of the right side of the brain. And that opens up so many dimensions of our existence, that so many people, myself included, I was just unaware of the totality of what it means to be human. And we so many of us, we narrow it down to this, the interpretive thinking mind, which is in the left brain, and it's dominated by language and, and mostly categorical processes. And all of a sudden, when we get into the right brain, and we find it's about space and paradox and metaphor and humor and sarcasm, and, you know, and music, and it's about so many things that we're actually living our lives for. We're just not completely aware of it. So the essential message, as I get it, is that the conditioned mind, conditioned through culture, through history, through religion, through science, and scientific models, it creates a false identity that we cling on to, which is, as you said, very consistent with Eastern philosophies, where the whole goal is liberation from suffering. And if I can simplify the message of Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, and aspects of Buddhism, they say that human suffering comes from what they call in Sanskrit, the five glishas. The first is not knowing your true self. The second is grasping and clinging at experience, which is ephemeral, and transient, and ungraspable. The third is recoiling from the same kinds of experiences. The fourth is identifying with this false identity. And the fifth is the fear of death. And then the solution to all of them is the first one, figuring out who you really are. So that is essentially the message of your book, right, through neuroscience. And that's the very, the interesting thing about neuroscience is some of the most major discoveries in neuroscience never really made the headlines. They never really made its way into our popular culture. And so things like the work with the split-brain patients, and they discovered that the left brain just confabulates, and it makes up stories, and we buy into these stories so easily. And that never really made it around enough that people could use it. And so, so many of us are living our lives as I was. I got caught up in a story. I got caught up in a narrative, and I bought into it. And I gave it a real existence. And that's when the suffering hits. That's why the title, No Self, No Problem, because one of the stories that we really get tied into is the story of us. And there's just so many things that our culture does that reinforces this idea that I am Chris, that I'm this particular age, that I'm my job, that I'm my education, that I'm how intelligent I am. And that's all the things going on in the left brain. And they're very easy for us to buy into because they're all over the place, and everyone is reinforcing us that that's who you really are. And just like you said, that one question, when you really go deep into it and you just explore, who am I? And this is a bit of that I ended up taking a different path. Instead of trying to figure out who I am, I ended up discovering an interesting path is who am I not? And I think neuroscience is really helpful, not so much in showing us who we are, but neuroscience has been really helpful in taking those layers of illusion away and showing us who we actually are not. And once all that's gone, then what you're left with is a much better answer to who you are than is, you can't put it into words, you can't articulate it, you can't measure it. And it always is a bit of a mystery. And so the left brain will always be a little bit disappointed, I think, in this book, because it might be excited with the first half, because the first half talks about all the things the left brain is great at. And just us being able to communicate right now, these are all things our left brain excels at, and we can be very grateful for this machinery of the left brain. But it also creates a story of who we think we are. And when you get caught up in that story... Isn't it the left brain, though, that wrote the book? It is. Well, that's a really interesting question. The left brain did the grammar, it did the spelling, but the inspiration comes from a really mysterious place that no one really knows. It's the topic of creativity. And I get into that with the second half of the book with the right brain. And anyone who goes off on a creative adventure realizes the mystery of where these ideas come from. And it's really like you just sit there and the left brain has no clue. It takes credit for it. The left brain is very good at taking credit for these ideas and believing that it was the author, and that it's the pilot, that it's really in control of everything. So it sort of takes the left brain off of its high status. And I don't want to degrade it. I think it's a wonderful tool. It allows us to do... If I just had the inspiration, but not the ability to put it down in a word, the book wouldn't exist. And so it's a wonderful tool. But the question is, are you using the tool or is it using you? And so who's the you that uses the tool? I mean, what is it that actually is seeking this alleviation from suffering? I mean, these days, you know, we talk about the default mode network and how psychedelics are cooling it down and giving us a more expanded awareness. I personally have struggled with these questions all my life. My training was not in neuroscience as yours is, but in neuroendocrinology. And having done internal medicine, struggled with identity the way you did it. I personally went through what many spiritual traditions call the dark night of the soul. And then having kind of crossed that threshold, found some liberation from that too, a joy. What is your experience right now of having written this book and giving us this understanding? What is your experience right now of the fear of death or human suffering or identity? I tried to put that as well as I could in the very last chapter, which, so even if you're reading the book, I think the last chapter in some ways is the most important. It's the one that also gets the most interesting comments. I've noticed that people either really enjoy the last chapter or they think it takes them to a place that makes them so uncomfortable sometimes. And I think maybe, you know, it just depends if you're ready for it or not. And so I like this idea of kind of flirting with enlightenment. And I think that's kind of where I'm at because you have these insights. You have these insights of the game. You have these insights that we create these egos and these identities, and they ultimately lead to suffering. And so you say, well, who's creating these identities? And that leads you down a path to a very interesting mystery. And that's the thing you have to live with in this existence, that there are some things that are mysteries and the thinking mind is always going to be in the dark about it. And there's all kinds of topics like consciousness. When will we figure out consciousness? I personally, I don't think we'll figure out consciousness in a way that we can think about it, that we can, that the thinking mind will be able to dissect it and take it apart. Like we can take apart other parts of the world and like we can take that watch and you can take it apart and in a way maybe understand it, but consciousness isn't like that. And so, but that's who we are. Fundamentally, we are this mystery that is beyond words. It's beyond the thinking mind's capacity. And so I feel very comfortable with that being, if you want to call it an identity, but then I live in this world. And so I'm far more playful with the ego. I haven't destroyed the ego. I haven't annihilated it. I don't suppress the processes of the left brain. I simply have taken a far more playful view with it. It's more of a game. It's more entertainment. And sometimes it's scary, but we go into haunted houses sometimes to be afraid on purpose. You know, we love adventure. And I think that this existence is fundamentally an adventure. A very special guest today is Chris Neibauer, Dr. Chris Neibauer. The book is No Self, No Problem. He was talking about the last chapter. And so I picked it up right now. And he poses this question here, who am I? And then explores this with questions like, am I the name someone gave me? Am I the gender that was assigned to me? Am I the job that I work for, work at? Am I the social rules that I play? Am I the age society tells me I am? Am I the intelligence society defines me as? And on and on, very pertinent questions, the eternal quest, as also explored by great seers in modern times from Nisargadatta Maharaj to Atmanand Krishna and to Ramana Maharshi. A book worth reading and exploring. So Chris, now that we've addressed the book, and I'm a fan of the book, and I recommend the book, I have some conundrums that maybe you can help me with, okay? So, and maybe you can't. You just mentioned the eternal mystery of consciousness. So, you know, I have a couple of manuals here with me. This is called Your Brain, the art, magic and science of what makes you, you. And it's very well done, very academic. And in the beginning here is something that I think you will probably agree with. Let me find the exact quote. So this is a section on visual processing. And I'll just read a very small section of it. Sight has been described as a system of sensory reasoning in which all of the separate visual processing comes together in real time to paint a coherent picture of what's going on out there. When different pathways present conflicting or missing information. Remember, this is all happening in milliseconds. The brain compensates by making educated guesses on the fly, filling in the gaps so you don't stand there in confusion while the puma leaps or the tiger leaps. And then, you know, the conclusion of this paragraph, everything, essentially everything you see is illusion. The story your brain is telling you about the world. Now, if everything you see is an illusion, the brain that you see must also be an illusion, right? So, to start saying that the brain has the secrets of understanding reality, you've just told me that the self is an illusion, that the confined self is an illusion. But what the confined self is looking at is also an illusion. But you're using the brain to explain it. And if the brain itself is an illusion, where do we go from here? Yeah, that's a great question. And like I said, the mode I'm in right now is more of a playful, more metaphorical mode. I think when we talk about neuroscience, it could be a great metaphor. And it's a very interesting thing when you go through life taking things literally or taking things metaphorically or figuratively. And so, the way I look at neuroscience right now, to take neuroscience literally is to be on a quest believing that you will find all the mysteries in the brain. And that's not my particular position. It's not really where the book ended up. Neuroscience is a great pointer. It can take you to interesting places. But in my view, that's, so the left and right sides of the brain are more tools that we can use on the path. They're like breadcrumbs that we've left ourselves to find our way home. I don't see it as the end. And I know there's a lot of neuroscientists out there that do. They assume that the hard problem will be eventually discovered by just dissecting the brain enough. But when we dissect the brain, we find cells and synapses and, you know, connections and, but that's all we find. And so, to me, it's a pointer to a mystery that is much deeper and difficult, if not impossible, to articulate. And in particular, almost impossible, maybe impossible for the thinking mind to ever comprehend. And for some people, they find that a great disappointment. So, when I teach my consciousness class, I tell them, I probably won't answer any of your questions. All I'm going to do is create a lot more. And ultimately, I'm going to point to consciousness as this amazing mystery that, and then there's two ways you can look at a mystery. For some people, they say, well, this is a failure, because it's still a mystery. And other people look at a mystery and say, oh, this is amazing. It's a mystery. And I guess I would put my path on the second of the two. So, I find neuroscience, I don't think it's going to reveal all the answers. And you say, well, the book is based in neuroscience, but I'm using neuroscience as a pointer to sort of take away the, because we, there are some very interesting findings about neuroscience that can, it fits so much with some of the most profound spiritual teachings that we know. And so, neuroscience, we could talk about the cognitive revolution in the 60s, when we realized, just like you said, when you're talking about the book with vision, so long, our species had assumed that we are living in the real world, that we see the world as it is. And then cognitive science came along and said, no, you're just representing the world. And that was a huge step in evolution of what it means to be human, to realize that our perceptions out there. And so, some people ask, well, are we living in simulation? I'm like, well, from a neuroscience perspective, clearly, this is all a simulation, because what I'm looking at right now, from a neuroscience perspective, is just those cells in the visual cortex. But that's all from a neuroscience viewpoint. So, can we take that a little bit deeper and say, well, okay, what's the neuroscience pointing to? Because then you, even if there are cells firing my visual cortex, but what's aware of those cells? What's aware of those processing? And that's one of the things we've learned from some of the teachings of the East. They were aware of the thinking mind way before science was. If you look at some of their teachings, they talk about the mind in the exact same way that cognitive scientists would. It's just it took cognitive science all the way to the 1960s to discover it. And so, we can learn a lot about the thinking mind. And that tells us a lot about who we're not. And so, when we get caught up in this process of thinking, to me, that's the illusion of who we think we are. And neuroscience can be really helpful to kind of take those layers of illusion away. So, in the book, when you read the first part, and you realize how easily we confabulate. And I focus on exercises, because you can't get too philosophical with this stuff. You have to go from experience first. And so, if you get the reader to experience for themselves, how the mind confabulates, it's really an epiphany that we're living in these made up stories. And if you take those stories too seriously, then you suffer. And one of the most fascinating, but causal factors in our suffering is the story of ourself. And when you see these neuropsychological findings, that the self is just a construct of the left brain, or maybe the default mode network, I'm not that worried about which part of the brain really constructs it. But when you find that we've got really good proof that we make these stories up, and that we make up our story also, and that can have a profound effect. And that's what shifts people from that left mode of processing, the left brain mode of processing, they start playing a little bit more at the right brain mode of processing, which I think is a little bit more connected. And, you know, and I use the word reality, whatever the mystery is, the right brain seems to be a little bit more on the path, I would say. That's very well put. Here's another book that I bought many, many years ago, maybe two decades ago, The Secret Language of the Mind. It's a visual inquiry into the mysteries of consciousness. And here's a statement, there are no neurons within the brain that provide sensory information about brain activity. This means that literally, we cannot physically sense what we are thinking. All the brain receives is electrical information. It's like Aladdin's lamp, you rub it, and this genie conjures up the whole universe. And it's not the real universe, including your body and your mind. So, you know, it's pretty scary to think about that. Till you finally get what you just said, this is seemingly an unsolvable mystery, are we living metaphors, your body is a metaphor, your brain is a metaphor, your world is a metaphor, everything that we talk about is a simulation. Who or what is doing the simulation? And that, I think, is the question that I, when I talk about a mystery, if you go into that from the, it's, so I just didn't, I would do the YouTube videos, and I was ending one of them with, look, if you really want the answer, don't think. And then the answer will come to you, because the thinking mind just creates more thoughts, and it just creates more processing that it feels comfortable with. And so, when we get to that, for people, for most ordinary people, and this is what I was so caught up in, that mode of thinking, and then I kept thinking I'd be able to think my way out of this thinking problem. And I think so many people in this culture, that's the world we're living in. And some really interesting mysteries happen when you stop thinking, or at least when thinking, when you get out of that mode of thinking. And so really what the book is about is, we have these two modes of consciousness, well, we have lots of modes of consciousness, but two kind of worlds that we live in. And one is not dominated by thinking. And the ordinary person lives these experiences all the time. But then the thinking mind comes back online, and it judges their existence from its vantage point, from its view, and it assumes that, well, I've always been thinking. You know, I kind of call it the refrigerator light problem, you know, because every time we start to think, we think we've been thinking all along. But we have all these wonderful modes of existence that are beyond thinking, like music. Music is a wonderful way to get beyond thought. And people go to work, and they get so, they love, they just, they become music for a while, and they become rhythm, and they're just kind of vibrating with the universe for a little bit. And they don't realize they're having kind of a transcendent experience. So the thinking mind comes back on and says, oh, yeah, I was just kind of jamming it out to music. And it doesn't realize that we have transcendent experiences all the time. But from the thinking mind's viewpoint, it has devalued these so much, it trivializes them. So in the second half of the book, I try to, you know, neuroscience, and this is one of the, I think, flaws of neuroscience, it considers anything that's unknown from the thinking mind's perspective, it considers it unconscious. And I would say that's probably the exact opposite. The thinking mind is conscious, but it's probably the lowest vibration of consciousness. And when we get into things like yoga, and Tai Chi, and all these wonderful mindfulness practices that people have been exploring, rather than becoming unconscious, we're actually becoming far more conscious, but without thought. And for so many of us, that's such a new experience. And I remember, I don't know, maybe it was in my 20s or 30s, it was such an unbelievable experience to start having experiences that were not based in thinking. And I sort of fell in love with them. It was so peaceful. And that's why I love music. And I encourage, and so many of my students, when I ask them, what does music mean to you? I get these amazing answers, because it shows that it's a transcendent experience. It's beyond our thinking. You know, you mentioned yoga, and I've been a student of yoga all my life. And the first chapter in Patanjali, first chapter, first verse, of course, it says, now the teaching of yoga begins. But the second verse says it all. It says yoga is the settling down of the vrittis, which are fluctuations of consciousness that we experience as sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts. It's the cessation of these fluctuations into the source of all existence. And it's one verse that summarizes all of yoga, that what we experience is not reality, but the fluctuations of reality. Reality, existence, awareness are fundamentally the same thing. And as they fluctuate, they give us the experience of a mind, a body, and a universe. And we then identify with that and say, that's who I am. Or, you know, this is what reality is. And now that, you know, science, and I noticed that you also teach artificial intelligence, that science is exploring so-called virtual meta-verses. I recently interviewed two very interesting physicists. One is at Caltech, Sean Carroll, who sits on the same desk as Richard Feynman, so he's no small physicist. And he posits, based on current scientific models, infinite universes, infinite universes, and infinite versions of you and me. And then I also spoke to Vilcek from MIT, who's a Nobel laureate. And he has written a new book called Fundamentals. And in the book Fundamentals, there's a chapter called The Real Fundamentals, where he speaks about spin, charge, and mass as the real fundamentals. But then he goes on to say that spin, charge, and mass are structureless and dimensionless. And so, I mean, it gets very confounding when you try to think your way out of this with the best science, with the best models in science, quantum mechanics, it only expands the mystery, if anything. And so, I find it very liberating when you say reality is the absence of thought, the absence of the fluctuations. And of course, in yogic traditions, also in the so-called advaita and dvaita traditions, Shiva and Shakti, so Shiva is pure consciousness, Shakti is the fluctuations that give us the appearance of the physical body and the physical world, and also its interpretation that we call the mind. So, when these great seers and sages say liberation comes from knowing that you're neither mind, nor body, nor universe, that when you start to think about it, it gets scary for most people, because then what's reality? And ultimately, you realize that, you know, we're all part of this appearance anyway, is a flicker in God's dream, or whatever that fundamental reality is. Wittgenstein, I think, said, we are asleep, our life is a dream, but once in a while, we wake up enough to know that we're dreaming. So, any last words from you before we close this amazing interview with you? And thank you very much. Thank you. And the way you put it, I think, is a really interesting metaphor for talking about dreaming, because I think we can get so caught up in thinking that we are asleep in a dream of thinking. And we're at a fantastic time right now where science has, it's pointing to the mystery. So, thinking has gotten to a level where it's going beyond thought. And so, you get the quantum physicists who say, look, this real world around us, when we look at it fundamentally, it's made of things that themselves are not real. And so, it's like science is starting to talk in zen koans. And so, where can we go except to wake up from the dream of thinking? And so, the second half of the book is, that's the purpose of it, is to explore paradox, explore metaphor, and what happens when we stop thinking? And some really fascinating things happen, and you start discovering who you are, you just realize there's no way to put that into words. There's no way to understand it in the same way that the thinking mind understands other things. And what we call awareness, obviously, is not thinking. When I'm asleep, I'm in deep sleep, and maybe I suddenly have a thought, a dream thought in deep sleep. And then I wake up, or I have a slight discomfort, sensation. I wake up, and all the while, my cells are fully aware of what's going on, even in deep sleep, right? There's an intelligence that far exceeds that of the thinking mind. And we're recognizing that intelligence in two ways. One, nature has always been there for us. And so, in its intelligence, it seems infinite. But in the thinking mind, it's far beyond its comprehension. But then, with artificial intelligence, we're starting to get to thinking machines that can outthink us. And so, that's going to be a very interesting adventure, too, because everything seems to be pointing to waking us up from this dream of thinking. My very special guest has been Dr. Chris Neibauer. The book is No Self, No Problem. How Neuropsychology is Catching Up to Buddhism, and more, actually. Thank you very much, Chris, for this extraordinary interview. We will send you a link when it's published. And I'm grateful that you took the time to speak to me. Oh, thank you so much. It's a wonderful conversation. Thank you.