The Inhibitor Function
And The Mind That Will Never Been Seen.
It was a calm day. Vikid had slept well. His dreams though a distant vanished memory, had been rich and vibrant, that much he could remember….
The brain, as we observe, is this exclusively structured piece of gloop within your skull. It’s made of specialized cells called nerves and these nerves extend out to all parts of your body, whether it’s your eyes, ears, teeth or little toes.
Each nerve cell is like a little fluid-bio-electrical-generator with (short and long) tentacle-like connections to other never cells. In this sense, the whole brain and the body it’s connected to, form a network within which electro-chemical energy flows and pulsates like a toroidal heart beat.
Many a (decent) philosopher and scientist believe this is where the mind lies. Just as in physics, we can see the movements of particles but we can’t see the forces that do it. The forces themselves are invisible, the only measurable part of the system is the change in its physical structure. In fact we can’t even see light, what is “seen” is only the physical change in the light-cone cells of our the eyes. That physical change manifests as an electrical impulse that then flows up the connecting nerve cell into the vast network of the brain where it cascades into specific zones and then into the brain at large.
Thus in a similar way your mind is not actually the brain but the force behind it that invisibly manipulates the brain structures and is channeled by those same structures. Thus you will never see a thought, only what it produces. And this is how thought influences physical reality while physical reality complements thought diametrically opposingly.
As Newton said, Action = Reaction.
Two sides of the same coin. Just as light itself is the interplay between the electrical & magnetic fields, which self support and propagate each other. Mind and Brain (the physical substrate) egg each other onwards in a pulsating spiral like harmony.
Well at least this is what Vikid was thinking about on his drive to work. It was to be a busy day...
Furthermore, there were two tendencies in this system of flow, one was excitatory and the other was inhibitory. It was a fine balance. Excite too much and one went into a epileptic fit, too little and one went dull or into sleep.
There were other modes that the network could go into too. There were stable modes and unstable modes. With stable modes the networks energy would be more or less unchanging, in unstable modes it would be chaotic. Then there was a line in between each phase, also called the zone of critically. A very fine part of the phase space where the network was on the edge of chaos, neither stable or unstable.
This is where Vikid thought love and intelligence lived. And there was more, these phases could be global, ie the whole network was acting like one whole unity or it could be segmented, where different parts of the network were acting independently.
This is where Vikid believed the art of meditation was helpful. By willfully watching the mind, quietening it or letting it flow, one could achieve profound states of being.
States that were so different as to be considered mythology.
These profound states could be achieved by other means also, such as the use of entheogens or psychedelics. And this had been confirmed by him by practical experience.
Which got him back to thinking about inhibition. The mind and its corresponding brain were designed conservatively, to stop going into spasmodic states, like anxiety and other such debilitating modes, there was a strong inhibitory bias. This meant the network often stopped the mind going off-piste.
But as any skier knows, much of the fun is off-piste.
Artists are perennially “off” somewhere, we know this instinctually. That’s what makes art, Art.
But the fact is that we spend most of our time believing that we are incapable of doing this or that. Or that this guy or gal is a genius. That we are ordinary. While the converse is true. You are highly capable. Enormously so.
You, my friend, are a Superhero.
It’s just that the inhibitory function has full control and is keeping you in the ordinary.
Iain McGilchrist, one of the finest living philosophers, has extensively studied brain structures and commented on its left/right asymmetry. There is a few thousand pages of reading here and countless videos, however Vikid was in a mood to summarize and add his homegrown masala.
The left brain, is narrow in focus, goal oriented and logically inclined. It deals with matters one at a time. Thus by extension relies on the inhibitory function to channel thoughts sequentially.
The right brain however, is global in its approach and holistic. It’s big picture, integrative and lives outside of time.
The marriage of the too gives our consciousness (that invisible thing no one can define or deny truthfully) its particular flavor.
Modern society, school, works, professions etc. are highly biased towards the left brain action. It’s a requirement of ‘Success’, however ill defined or conceived that word is. Thus our modern “muscles” are built and trained for it. It is like we have been to gym our whole lives doing squats and barbell curls only on one side. That is society today. A highly unbalanced machine.
We can look to blame politics or religion or a hundred different things be it racism, colonialism, Marxism or some other -ism. The fact is that the inhibitory function has gotten too dominant.
Vikid had some of his own ideas for how the system could be rebalanced. He thought to write about it in another post. However the answer actually lay in each and every one of us. It was just being suppressed by the Inhibitory Function.
The trick was just learning to let it go.
And that’s,