Deep thoughts about yourself and self-improvement …
Even a quick glance at the self-help shelf in any bookstore will quickly reveal that the industry is booming and that most of us seem to have a secret desire to “be a better person.” We look for that magic formula that will enlighten us, hopefully, the sooner the better. But is enlightenment, as we understand it, really achievable? If we had a better life, what would it be like? Would it be very different from our current life? Furthermore, what if we found out that this ‘me’, which we are so hell-bent on improving, turns out not to really exist, to be a myth, an unreliable creation of our own brain? Can modern neuroscience shed any light on this topic, and if so, do you need to be an expert to understand it? If you’re confused, prepare for many of your ideas to be challenged by Chris Niebauer’s thought-provoking book. The Neurotic Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment: How the Left Brain Plays Endless Games of Self-Improvement.
Many self-help books are written from a New Age / Eastern Mysticism perspective and somehow Niebauer’s book fits into this category. Niebauer is heavily influenced by both the mid-20th century author Alan Watts and the contemporary writer Eckhart Tolle. Watts wrote about a variety of Eastern religions, such as Zen, Hinduism, and Taoism, and Tolle is heavily influenced by Buddhism. However, to describe the book as purely of this type would be very misleading. Also, to describe The neurotic guide simply as a self-help book, it would be equally misleading. Certainly it includes mental exercises and meditation techniques that the reader may find to help them achieve a new state of mind and give them a new approach to life, but this is a theory / philosophy book that focuses on challenging our standard ideas about ourselves and our lives. Niebauer is in fact “a university professor specializing in cognitive neuropsychology” (Preface) and the book has great neuroscience content. In essence, Niebauer is trying to give Eastern mysticism a neuroscience framework, taking it from the world of pure ideas and giving it a solid foundation in science.
As the reader may be guessing by now, this is not really a beginner’s book. It would be helpful to have some knowledge of both Eastern mysticism and psychology. Niebauer’s ideas are unorthodox and very challenging, and it takes a lot of thought. The first chapter, for example, can be difficult to understand, but Niebauer’s ideas become easier to appreciate if you stick with the book and keep reading. In the end, you may not agree with everything Niebauer says, but you have undoubtedly been forced to think much of what you believe about yourself and the world.
Despite the emphasis on theory, the book does not use technical terms or offer extensive and in-depth scientific discussions. There are illustrative real-life examples of Niebauer and his family. These examples help make the text more personal and easier to identify for the average reader.
As the subtitle suggests, much of this book is concerned with the left side of the brain. This is the hemisphere that is dominant, that is, that is most prominent in our thinking. Look for patterns and see the world in terms of categories. Divide the world into nouns, that is, stable “things”. This is all fine, except that much of the world is a process, which means that things change, in fact they are often in considerable flux. Therefore, we tend to think of ourselves as a permanent “image”. We tell stories from our history that illustrate ‘who we are’, when in reality we are a changing entity. This idea is very much in agreement with narrative psychology (Dan P. McAdams. The stories we live by: personal myths and the creation of the self: __ New York: The Guilford Press, c1993). Taking another example, we tend to see enlightenment as an achievable “thing”, a permanent state in which our old self ends and a new self arrives. That is, we see enlightenment as the cessation of one stable thing and the beginning of another. As Niebauer points out, our left brain will never stop working, even if we become much more aware of our right brain, process-oriented, expanded consciousness, therefore, enlightenment is a continuous process of change, of seeing the world from a new way.
Much of the book focuses on the discovery that, in the absence of hard data, the left brain connives, that is, concocts perfectly reasonable-sounding, albeit false, explanations for why the world appears as it is. It is then when we have little information, we see “patterns” that do not exist, at least not in the way that we think they do. This discovery comes from split brain patients. These are people who, usually due to extreme epilepsy, have had their corpus callosum cut. The corpus callosum allows the left and right hemispheres to communicate. It doesn’t take much to remember a time when we “jumped to conclusions.” At that moment we are sure of our ideas, but then we doubt because we find information in another way or because we see that we do not really have evidence. The bottom line of these findings is, of course, that we should be much less sure of ourselves. This is an idea that Alan W. Watts proposes in his book The wisdom of insecurity (New York: Vintage Books, c1951).
Niebauer proposes two main solutions to our problems in life. The first is that we are aware of life, observing ourselves and the things that happen to us, from a distance. This allows us to truly observe, rather than jump to conclusions. It also allows us to distance ourselves from the emotional drama of our life. We observe “I am upset”, but with the prolonged act of observation we are one step away from our uneasiness. This, of course, is what is known in Buddhism as mindfulness. Niebauer’s second solution is to approach life with a playful attitude. We take ourselves less seriously and don’t know for sure that our left brain wants to make sure we do.
Of course, the three paragraphs above only touch on the topics discussed in Niebauer’s book, ranging from the most specific and real that can be done about anxiety, to the broader and more esoteric than the part of the self that survives after anxiety. death. While the book is not long, there is a lot in it, and the reader may prefer to read just one chapter a day to give the author due consideration.
One point of criticism is that all of Niebauer’s evidence comes from patients with brain damage and optical illusions. These are not circumstances in which the “normal” aspects of life apply. This leads us to wonder how much these circumstances occur in “ordinary” life. Not that we doubt what Niebauers says, but we wonder how often circumstances occur. How often, for example, do we jump to conclusions? Niebauer would like us to do it frequently, but that’s the way it is. A little more evidence on this point would be helpful. But even if we disagree on how often, Niebauer’s book is certainly a revelation.
The neurotic guide to avoiding enlightenment is without a doubt a book that will challenge most readers and give them a lot to think about. We all tend to be reasonably sure that we ‘know ourselves’ and understand the world, but Chris Niebauer definitely makes us wonder how much we really do. Niebauer doubts that we can ever completely escape ourselves and become “enlightened” as we wish, but argues that we can be more aware. If you are interested in Eastern philosophy, you will surely find this book different from most on the subject you own. If you are interested in learning more about how the brain works, this volume will also intrigue you. I am pleased to rate this book four stars out of five.
References
McAdams, Dan P. The stories we live by: personal myths and the creation of the self: __ New York, New York: The Guilford Press, c1993.
Niebauer, Chris. The Neurotic Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment: How the Left Brain Plays Endless Games of Self-Improvement: __ Denver, Colorado: Outskiris Press, c2014.
Watts, Alan W. The wisdom of insecurity: __ New York, New York: Vintage Books, c1951.