The Emergent Mind: how intelligence arises in people and machines

by Gaurav Suri and Jay McClelland

Such a brilliant book! In The Emergent Mind Gaurav Suri and Jay McClelland present a radical new perspective on how minds work. Most importantly, their version of things does not include any need for a separate self to explain intelligence or behaviour. Instead they describe how networks of tiny neurons may collectively give rise to capabilities far beyond those of any of the individual units involved. They suggest a parallel to how intelligence emerges in colonies of ants.

The emergent mind of ants

Ants are very small creatures who collectively appear to achieve some really impressive things. For example they can build bridges with their own bodies that allow their colony to cross gaps and navigate uneven terrain. But individually they have very small brains that seem to allow them to follow very simple rules such as “if a scent is detected, follow that scent”.

In The Emergent Mind, Suri and McClelland use a simple illustration of ants collectively discovering the shortest route around an obstruction that is placed in between a food source (such as an abandoned half-eaten sandwich) and their nest. Within a few minutes of the obstacle being introduced, most of the ants will be following this new shortest route.

I have experimented with laying out a version of this ant scenario for friends and asking them what they imagine is going on. Almost everybody projected an anthropomorphic ant (maybe inspired by those cartoon characters in the movie Antz) consciously considering their options and communicating their findings to their friends. But this is actually an unnecessary embellishment. The ants leave pheromone trails wherever they go. And they also follow the strongest pheromone trail in front of them. The ants that accidentally find the shortest route will turn around and head home soonest and will therefore be laying the first, and consequentially (as other ants follow them) strongest pheromone trail. So the most sensible route becomes the most popular one. Presumably this is not because any of them ‘knows’ it’s the shortest or most sensible path, but just because ants’ brains are evolutionarily ‘programmed’ to follow pheromone trails.

So how is this relevant to human intelligence?

Human brains involve networks of connections between billions of neurons. They are infinitely more complex than ants’ brains. And yet, like ant colonies (and ants’ somewhat smaller brains) they are made up of lots of individual units that, individually, are nowhere near capable of the immense intelligence that seems to emerge somehow from the interactions between these units. The way that neurons communicate involves them building up electrical charge in response to some sort of stimuli. When this charge reaches a certain threshold it becomes an action potential that ‘fires’ and activates other connected neurons. This in turn increases the other neurons’ electrical charge. Suri and McClelland describe how this seems to work collectively with multiple firings and connections and forward and backward interactions leading to activation or inhibition of other nerve cells. This then appears to give rise to some sort of intelligent-appearing response.

So, for example, that half-eaten sandwich I mentioned earlier, plus the light quality of a certain time of day and a feeling of hunger, tiredness or boredom, may have activated a collection of sensory neurons that have fired off, or inhibited, many other neurons deeper in your brain networks. Many other factors, such as an aversion to insects or gluten, could have also got involved. And somehow, collectively, it may have given rise to a series of actions – perhaps going into the kitchen and making a snack. Or pulling a disgusted face and stopping reading. It sounds incredible and yet something incredible does appear to be happening! And no need for an individual ‘me’ to be involved at all. There is more to be said about the appearance of choice of course – but I will come back to that in a future post….

The emergent mind of frogs

In the meantime, let us consider the mind of frogs. Paul and me once stayed in a rather damp room by a river in Sri Lanka. Throughout our stay there was a continuous line of ants marching down one of the walls. Lower down the wall, at the far end of the ant line, sat a frog with a very flicky tongue. The ants just kept following that pheromone trail and marched straight into the frog’s mouth. They obviously hadn’t yet evolved an instinctive communication system that could protect them from the emergent intelligence of frogs.

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We also discuss the similarity and difference between the ‘First Belief’ in separation and other early childhood beliefs. And we consider what can help with healing from both the pain of assumed separation and negative self-beliefs.

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A seeker discovers the insignificance of ‘non-dual’ experience

Towards the end of the dark, miserable and often wonderful years of spiritual seeking, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity of a few one-to-one sessions with Roger Linden.  In my efforts to understand what I seemed to be missing, I would present him with accounts of my spiritual openings, realisations, times of ‘oneness’, energy, love, spontaneity and ask him ‘Is this it? Is it relevant?’. Each time Roger would dismiss my offerings with the word “experience’. I was particularly enamoured of the time I followed instructions (in a book by Osho) to ‘give up all belief’, which gave rise to an intense despair followed by an incredibly beautiful day. The sense of freedom didn’t last and I wondered if I had somehow ‘chosen to come back’ to mundane, constricted reality. Roger suggested that perhaps it was not true that all belief had gone. ‘For example’ , he said, ‘do you believe that there is a kitchen behind that wall?’ I knew there was a kitchen behind that wall and thought he was being a bit silly. 

Whatever I offered him, he told me it was ‘just experience’. This even included the sense of witnessing, which initially seemed to be located just behind my head, and then was seen to have no location. Still just experience. I was left with the question ‘what can there possibly be that is not experience?’.

One day I presented him with a recurrent experience that was so trivial it hardly seemed worth mentioning. I described the sense that sometimes I could be say, sitting in my house thinking about going for a run, and then jogging along a road half an hour later, and it was as if there was no time between the experiences. Visually, experientially, sensations, thoughts, everything was different and yet there was a sameness and stillness, kind of like it was happening in the same time and space, or even timelessness and spacelessness. This makes it sound like a big deal, but it really wasn’t. Just a momentary recognition of something that seemed quite strange. In a slightly embarrassed and dismissive way I asked Roger if this was relevant at all; even I knew that I was describing an experience here. Roger paused (with hindsight and projection I imagine he may have felt cautious about giving me another object to grab hold of) and then said ‘it kind of is’. I was really shocked and said something along the lines of ‘but that isn’t anything!’. And Roger smiled and nodded in the wise and infuriating way he has.

It didn’t make any sense to me and it certainly wasn’t liberation. It was though, increasingly obvious that whatever could be grabbed hold of, wasn’t ‘it’. Anything that seems to be a thing, that changes, that seems possible to own, or have, is impermanent. All experience, including the sense of being someone who has experiences, arises and disappears. So what is it that is overlooked? It can’t be any thing. It can’t have any qualities. It can’t exist in time or space. It can be pointed to only by negation, or saying what it isn’t, as indicated by the Sanskrit expression ‘neti neti’ (not this, not this). Which can seem confusing, because in the seeing of this, it is also obvious that everything is actually this ‘no-thingness’, appearing as something.

I sometimes hear people describing ‘non-dual experiences’. I think this term is often used to  point to experiences in which the underlying ‘no-thingness’ appearing as something seems to be glimpsed. Unfortunately though, there often still seems to be an ongoing subconscious identification as ‘some thing’ that persists. And if ‘I am something’ then there also seems to be ‘other things’ (all of which could be called experiences) that can be owned and known and given meaning to.

The reality is that owning, knowing and meaningfulness are all transient and have no underlying substance. The apparent objects of experience are simply that. In the seeing of that simplicity, it is fun and interesting, and possibly practically useful, to share experience and hypothesise about what is going on. I am still fortunate enough to have one-to ones with Roger, but now we call it counselling supervision. We discuss my client work and he shares the benefit and insight of his many years of experience as a therapist. He can still be wise and infuriating, but at least he shows a little bit of interest in my experiences now.

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Would you take part in a memory reconsolidation experiment that promised Liberation?

I recently had an interesting conversation with a really lovely and open-minded neuroscientist who had read my book. He considered himself a seeker and had spent a lot of time with non-duality teachers. 

We were discussing the challenges that would be involved in setting up a neuroscience experiment to test the theory that liberation involved, or might even be invoked via, the neural mechanism of Memory Reconsolidation (as proposed in my book).

I suggested that even if we could set up a way to reliably, and safely, erase the assumption of separation, the biggest issue would be finding participants who actually wanted to go ahead with the procedure. The neuroscientist was taken aback, “Why would that be a problem? Surely lots of people are seeking for just that?” he asked.

“Well” I said “ Would you want to do it?”.  With some surprise he realised that he didn’t think he would: “I feel like my family need to be a priority at the moment and I wouldn’t want to not have control over being there for them”. 

I wonder how many seekers actually feel like this. However much we are told that liberation is simply the end of an illusion which was never true anyway, there often seems to be a primal fear of losing something really important. In the neuroscientist’s case it seemed to be the (illusory) sense of control. For others it might be the (illusory) sense of existence. Even though there appear to be large numbers of people interested in non-duality, it is possible that most of them would prefer to wait until tomorrow to realise the simple, ordinary truth that life isn’t personal (and never has been).

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I made this audio recording of Chapter 5 of the First and Last Belief to accompany my answer to a reader’s question “Are you suggesting that we could make Liberation happen?” . It describes the paradox that there is no separate self ‘doing life’ or making the choice to make anything happen and yet life may appear as if there is. In relation to ‘making Liberation happen’ , it is entirely possible that life may at some point appear as if there is a neuroscientifically-informed method that could effectively ‘erase’ the false sense of separation:

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Does nothing really happen?

Email conversation with a friend:

Friend: I’ve been doing some research into buddhist teachings from the 6th Patriarch to the 16th Karmapa, and have discovered that nothing happens. Have you ever experienced this nothing happening?

Reply: It’s not an experience – it’s the nature of reality. There is a stillness in which life appears and disappears and leaves no trace. This is only obvious in the absence of identification with part of experience. The sense of being any sort of experiencer is actually part of the experience. This can’t be intellectually understood, or glimpsed and lost, or experienced by anyone. No way to get hold of it, nothing to get hold of and no-one to do it. Which can sound very frustrating!

Friend: I see now that there is a very subtle idea or assumption that I exist as a separate being. This idea or assumption is already here before anything else, and is so pervasive that it is barely seen.

Reply: Beautiful! And there is also an energetic experience which seems to suggest this.  But both the subtle assumption and energetic experience are just part of what’s arising in stillness, like everything else. Nothing appearing as something. So there is still actually nothing happening.

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There is no ‘one’ to follow a path to liberation – but is there a path?

There is no path to liberation because there is no ‘one’ to follow a path. It can though, sometimes appear as if there is a process of disillusionment that precedes the end of the sense of separation. In this particular case, there seemed to be a series of realisations which involved ‘seeing through’ some assumptions about the nature of reality, yet the sense of personal self and volition remained essentially untouched. Towards the end, there was an understanding that liberation was the end of any sense of volition and that, theoretically at least, there was never really any personal control of anything. But it still felt as if there was, including the sense that it was also possible to actively ‘let go’ and ‘allow’ spontaneity. Even though it seemed to be understood intellectually, and at times experientially, the illusion was still firmly in place. 

Actually, the thought of there really being no volition, no control, no personal self at all, felt really scary. I used to imagine that liberation would happen sometime in the future, when I had sorted out some undefined personal things that I wanted to do, and that then it would be ok to ‘surrender to life’ and whatever chaos this might bring, given that I would no longer be in control of anything. In a way it seemed like contemplating death. The loss of something that seemed absolutely fundamental was unimaginable and not something that any sane person would ever choose. How could I choose to destroy myself? It would be suicide. 

Life with a sense of separation seemed more and more meaningless and unsatisfactory. Eventually there was a sort of relentless turning inward towards the perpetually evasive sense of separate self, which suddenly seemed to pop or dissolve. I’m not sure that it had actually ‘become weaker’ or been ‘coming and going’ at all during what I’m calling the apparent process, even though there had been all sorts of experiences of altered perception and spontaneity. In hindsight, it just seemed to be something that was taken for granted, that obviously seemed to be the way that it was, and then suddenly it wasn’t, and had obviously always been an illusion with no real substance.

Life is both ordinary and amazing. Amazingly ordinary. In the simplicity of seeing that nothing should, or could, be in any way different to the way it seems to be right now, there is a profound relaxation. Life lives itself timelessly, as it always has done. Whatever seems to happen, happens, including all the responses of this apparent organism. There can seem to be a continuation of some of the constricted habits and responses learnt through belief in a sense of separation, and sometimes some of these can seem to be seen through and drop away. But nobody is doing it; it is all just doing itself. There had been a fear of losing myself, but that self was seen to be just a phantom. The struggles of apparent separation are seen to be entirely unnecessary and misconceived. When it is obvious that there is no separate self, it is also obvious that there is nothing else that is, or could possibly be, separate. Instead we are left as our true nature, real Self, the still silent nothingness behind everything, that includes everything, is everything. Peaceful, delightful, simple. Unconditional love. 

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Life can seem very complicated. There seems to be so much going on, so many things interacting with each other, so many different possibilities to be taken into account. Yet in another way it is also incredibly simple. 

The only time that ever demands a response is the present moment. And that response is already happening. How could it not be? Even if that response is a resistance to what is happening (for example some sort of reaction against what is written here), it is already happening, right now. Even if the response is an apparent numbness or disinterest or indecisiveness, that too is what is happening right now. And even if the response involves thoughts of planning something in the future, or remembering something in the past, that is also happening right now. Thoughts, sensations, behaviours and emotions all seem to arise in response to whatever else is appearing in the present moment and are part of it. 

Life is already responding to itself. Actually, even to say there is a response, or a present moment, is an unnecessary embellishment. Life is, already. Sounds, sights, thoughts, feelings, movements and anything else are all just happening. Simpleness unfolding through apparent complication. In the seeing that it is just as it is, all the apparent activity of life is doing itself. It is impossible to really separate any part out and say ‘this is me’, or ‘mine’, or ‘I am responsible for this’.  

So even if life seems to be complicated, there is no-one separate who can do anything about it. In which case, who cares? There might be a thought of complicatedness and someone who needs to do something about it, and then that thought might disappear and there is still only the simplicity in which that thought, and everything else, appears and disappears. 

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Human beings love stories. Throughout the ages, the art of storytelling has provided an accessible and enjoyable way of sharing ideas and information, as well as a source of entertainment in itself. So what is it about stories that makes information so much more interesting and ‘alive‘ than a logical and academic presentation of the facts? The answer seems to be that human brains are characterised by an amazingly complex capacity for pattern recognition. The brain doesn’t process things in a logical, linear way, but instead instinctively looks to approximate new experience to pre-existing patterns. Thus, for example, if we arrive in an airport in a new country, we tend to quickly process, and make sense of, the previously unexperienced environment, through unconscious reference to patterns originating in experience of other airports and similar buildings . This allows us to navigate our way through it in a way that we might not be able to if we had just teleported in from another planet made of jelly, where buildings do not exist. For earthlings, there still might be some confusions of language, social custom, architectural conventions etc, but at least there is likely to be recognition of doors, windows, corridors, people in uniforms etc, even if we might never have encountered ones quite like these before.

It seems that when we hear stories, they evoke images that link them to amalgamated previous personal experience, whether actual or imagined. This new information is then naturally processed and broadens our ability to make sense of related, and possibly more complex, stories and experiences.  We might read about Anne Frank at school. As a young person, we recognise similarity in some of her experiences, which also helps us to imagine and ‘take on board’ (incorporate into our mental patterns) those which are less familiar. This helps us to make sense of a film we happen to see, set in Nazi Germany, which in turn makes other films and literature on similar or related topics more accessible and interesting and might even contribute to an inclination to study history, politics, psychology, international affairs, film-making, languages or a multitude of other subjects at university. 

So what happens when we hear stories about non-duality? Perhaps we hear the tale of when liberation apparently happened, or a description of how life appears now. Perhaps we  hear an attempt to describe the indescribable. What happens then? It seems likely that the brain will attempt to fit what is described with similar experience, in order to make sense of it. The problem is that what is actually being alluded to cannot be experienced or imagined. Instead it is so intimately known that it is not referenced when looking for a pattern to match it with. This is because what is being pointed towards is universal to ALL experience and ALL imagining. It is the experiencing itself, the ground of all experience, and as such, is not necessary to remember or process in any way at all. It is omnipresence and it is what we are. And it seems to be overlooked as long as there is an identification with part of the experience. As long as there seems to be a sense of a somebody who has experience, is affected by, owns, manipulates, creates, imagines or remembers experience, there is an illusion going on. 

We are not an idea of a brain, or a witnesser, or a little person walking around in a big world. We are not a collection, or collector, of apparent memories or sensations, or some sort of special spiritual thing. We are the still, silent, timeless, spaciousness itself, absolutely untouched, unchanging, emptiness, in, or on, which the fullness of life appears.  Including apparent little people and ideas of brains and spiritual (or any other) experiences. This cannot be understood through thought. It cannot be partly seen, or found and lost. It is the timelessness in which a sense of time can seem to appear.  It is always obvious in itself and apparently obscured to any ‘one’ that looks for it. There is no point in trying to find it, yet in revealing itself it could never have been hidden at all. Looking for an answer in thought just seems to generate more questions. We are that in which thought, and everything else appears. Prior to thought, prior to questions, prior to stories. Nothing to be done for there is no doer and nothing ever happens. Yet doing and questions and answers and stories seem to appear, and life lives itself anyway. Now how can a brain even start to reference that….

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