Blissful Ignorance? I Think Not...

While reading Oliver Sacks’s “The Last Hippie,” I found myself questioning some of the precepts of yoga. Particularly, the Yoga Sutras-—which, prior to my having taken any cognitive science classes, seemed (to me) to be the ultimate answer to everything-—as it was, apparently for Greg F. and his fellow Krishna Consciousness comrades. [The Yoga Sutras are the ancient Sanskrit notes taken by students of Patanjli—the assumed first ever yoga teacher (who may in fact be several people; this is highly debated by yogic philosophers)—compiled around 200 B.C. The sutras provide the basis for the practice of yoga, of which the physical postures widely known in the western world comprise only one eighth—i.e. only one of the proposed eight limbs of yoga, which catalogue all aspects of leading a yogic lifestyle. Think of it as the bible of yoga]. Granted, I was slightly more naïve at the time, but I have always thought that such scriptures—and I say scriptures without the least intent of sounding religious—contained in them a vast amount of knowledge that was simple, but applicable to the world at large. Of course, the concept of enlightenment—or, Samadhi, in Patanjli’s words—was always well beyond my grasp. However, much of the wisdom contained in the sutras seemed to be validated by (and more clearly illustrated/proven) by the knowledge I acquired in psychology classes, cognitive science classes, and even biology classes.
Concepts concerning being in the present moment, stilling the mind, letting go of material attachments (including attachment to one’s own body), and more have certainly colored my interpretation of the psycho-physiological aberrations we have read about thus far. For example, I believed that Skloot’s mental deficiencies were, in part (though not entirely) a gift: a forced embrace of simplicity that would have been otherwise impossible for him. There also seemed to be a kind of deliverance from the norm in other cases of memory loss, often referred to as a forced existence in an “eternal present” which, I found, strikingly similar to the goals of many meditative practices.
When, however, Sacks compared the symptoms of Greg F’s frontal lobe damage with the assumptions of Swami Bhaktivedanta and his followers, the latter’s opinion seemed utterly…stupid. Thus there was a huge discordance now between something I had very much thought was informative, true (an ambiguous term in itself, but that’s fodder for another post), and accurate. I wondered if I was indeed ignorant or naïve in agreeing with the yoga sutras for so long, and I began reevaluating their importance to me. So I read through them again, especially focusing on the sections discussing Samadhi (a gradation of enlightenment), definitions of serenity and explanations of how one achieves such states.
Thankfully, I was well assured that the sutras did not seem to advocate frontal lobe deficiencies, nor did they seem to propone that any particular cerebral structure would promote a more advantageous mental state. Though, given the era of his writings, Patanjali was probably not well versed in neuroscience, it was clear that what he had to say was obviously not called into working memory by those individuals who deemed Greg “an illuminate…[with] the ‘inner light growing’” (Lethem 197) or one “having achieved ‘detachment,’ and Enlightened One” (Lethem 200).
To these individuals’ credit, it is easy to see where they would have been mistaken. The twenty-seventh sutra (of the second book of the Yoga Sutras) asserts that the wisdom gained en route to enlightenment is “sevenfold [interestingly, enough, Ledoux’s “magic number” of working memory]…One experiences the end of 1) desire to know anything more; 2) desire to stay away from any thing; 3) desire to gain anything new; 4) desire to do anything; 5) sorrow; 6) fear; 7) delusion” (Satchidananda 199). Greg’s reluctance and refusal to learn Braille would seem to match the first qualification; while his reaction to everything with jokes might seem to fulfill the second [indeed, “virtually every object, every person, every sensation, every word, every thought, every emotion, every nuance and tone[,]” as Sacks asserts, elicited a pun from Greg (Lethem 208)]. In turn, qualifications three and four are ostensibly satisfied by Greg’s overall passivity, his “unnatural serenity that his Krishna brethren had percieved, apparently, as ‘bliss’” (Lethem 199). What with his lack of emotion (for the most part) [as Sacks describes, “there was no furious defiance, no raling at Fate, no sense, apparently, of indignity or despair” (Lethem 203)], qualifications five and six are also satisfied. Of course, it would be impossible to misconceive of the seventh entity: delusion. The fact that Greg firmly believed he was not blind, despite the fact that “his eyes showed complete optic atrophy” implies the he was clinging to the delusion of being able to see.
As regards instance, one (Greg’s refusal to learn Braille) it would be impossible to correlate this with a yogic state of achievement, since the very next qualification (that the desire to stay away from anything is supposed to end when one gains wisdom) discounts it as a possibility. (In other words: by refusing to learn Braille, Greg is not adhering to the second tenet of wisdom acquisition, and thus does not qualify as being enlightened.) Examining his incontinent wisecracking, the 38th sutra of book two (which emphasizes the necessity of “continence” [brahmacharya] (Satchidananda 137) disqualifies the behavior from any semblance to samadhic ascension. In turn, instances three and four (with which Greg’s passivity is misidentified) are rendered inapplicable by the requirement of non-distraction for true serenity or truly being present—or, what the sutras refer to as “the restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff” (Satchidananda 3). The very fact that Greg was uncontrollably drawn in by and reactive to “..everything around [him] and everything within [him]” (Lethem 208) proves the inconsistency of his ostensible passivity. Finally, he indeed shows emotions by his reactions to the greatful dead and the sorrow he displays at hearing about the loss of his father—thus demonstrating the fallacy in the false attribution of Greg’s emotionless state to the end of sorrow and fear.
Appropriately, all such qualifications arguably require the prefrontal cortex, inasmuch as this structure gives rise to the higher-order processing capacities that neurotypical humans are capable of. Applicable to all seven byproducts of wisdom (or to the disappearance of all hindrances to wisdom), as per the yoga sutras, are the distinct capacities of top-down processing (a.k.a. executive functions) illustrated by Ledoux. These include attention (giving rise to mental “continence,” control of emotions, and the filtering of unnecessary stimuli); prefrontal cortical influence over what (temporal) and where (parietal) pathways in object recognition (which would prevent against delusion); and working memory (which, LeDoux argues, makes consciousness possible—and, of course, consciousness is a huge component of the awareness that leads to wisdom).
Thus it is not that the yoga sutras are inherently ignorant, wrong, or naïve (in fact, they, again, seem compatible!). Rather it is their misinterpretation that underlies the apparent idiocy of Greg’s Krishna comrades. Sadly, this misinterpretation led to the exacerbation of a tumor that, originally, could have been removed without adverse consequences experienced by Greg in its overdue extrication.
In this manner, Greg’s story disproves the very notion that ignorance is bliss. Though it may seem, irrefutably, to be just that (as Greg seemed to be blissful, and his symptoms seemed to be embodiments of enlightenment) it is just the opposite: ignorance is by no means bliss. To believe that it is, is to avoid taking full advantage of your prefrontal cortical capacities. (Or, more simply, to avoid the higher order thought processing that distinguishes us as human).