Neural Suitcase Tells the Tales of Many Minds

It is our mind where the greatest idea sessions are held. Mind, our neural suitcase, determines the size of our world. Our neural suitcase is the best idea factory. It appreciates and depreciates. It needs repair and maintenance. We need to use it. Otherwise we might lose it. Who says that an empty mind is a worthless mind? There is nothing like empty mind. So much goes on inside the mind even when it is ‘empty’. How you conduct your talks with yourself is thus important. Even when you are talking with someone else, you are, in fact, talking to yourself. Mental conversations go on uninterrupted when you are working, studying, reading, watching, walking and eating. You are constantly judging people even when you don’t know who that person is and how your judgment matters to you or that person. Science says that in mundane moments of life our brain shifts to a default mode. This default mode has a role in generating spontaneous internal thoughts. Researchers say that the mind’s default network becomes more active during daydreaming. Building castles in the air is thus not a waste of time. Henry David Thoreau said, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under these.” As they say, focus has distraction built into it. I would like to believe that imposed restrictions of any kind are not good for meditation. I want to believe that a wandering mind helps us to discover new ways of seeing the reality. We love variety, surprise and adventure of the unknown. Distraction of some kind, perhaps, helps us in finding new ways. Like mind wandering, daydreaming seems to be a good idea because it brings in more resources for the mind to work on. T E Lawrence said that people who dream with eyes wide open make their dreams come true for everyone. I also liked the observation of actor Sam Anderson who writes, “The truly wise mind will harness, rather than abandon, the power of distraction. Unwavering focus—the inability to be distracted—can actually be problematic. It suggests that restlessness, in fact, can be advantageous.” The message of the wise is that the inability to be distracted can actually be problematic. In other words, restlessness is advantageous. At long last, the daydreamer is getting some respect, writes John Tierney. Our spiritual and religious traditions tell us that the quieter you become the more you can hear. We are advised to ‘watch the thought, feel the emotion, and observe the reaction’. This is exactly what psychologists Mathew Killingworth and Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University experimentally did. Killingworth and Gilbert studied people’s ongoing thoughts, feelings and actions using smart phones. They asked simple questions like ‘What are you doing right now?’, ‘Are you thinking about something other than what you’re currently doing?” Their purpose was to understand cognitive and neural bases of mind wandering. The studies of Killingworth and Gilbert tell us that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the ‘non-present’. We spend much of our time in the non-present. We spend nearly half of our waking hours on thinking about something other than what is happening in front of us. The conclusion Killingworth and Gilbert have drawn is that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. There is also a group of researchers who say that a wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils, and keep you on course toward long-term goals. They say that a wandering mind keeps the individual’s larger agenda fresher in mind. A wandering mind is good for a creative mind. Psychologist Jonathan Schooler, however, reminds us that just daydreaming is not enough. “Letting your mind drift off is the easy part. The hard part is maintaining enough awareness so that even when you start to daydream you can interrupt yourself and notice a creative thought.” Schooler’s research shows that mind-wandering can lead people to creative solutions of problems, which could make one happier in the long term. We all know that we must not pass too much of our time on idle deliberations. It is also absolutely understandable that during flow (a feeling of spontaneous joy, while performing a task) one’s subjective experience of time is altered. It is also true that being happy makes one more creative. But it is also a fact that it is not easy to control mind wandering. At any given moment so much information about the external world enters our brain. How can we stop them from entering our consciousness? Going to the Himalayas is one way of experiencing solitude, but it is too bothersome. Moreover, such solitude may not serve the desired purpose. Can one leave his mind elsewhere for the sake of avoiding storms? Keeping a quiet mind amidst storm is not easy, as is remaining an individual in a crowd. The ability to think about what isn’t happening is a significant cognitive achievement, but it comes at an emotional cost, say Killingworth and Gilbert. The extent of mind wandering depends upon the activity we are engaged in at that point of time. Mind wandering is not bad if it wanders during boring tasks. If during a lecture, students are more interested in the opposite sex sitting nearby rather than the lecture, whose fault is it? John Tierney rightly said, it depends on the lecture. If the lecture is interesting, one would not want his brains to miss vital knowledge. Otherwise, the brain would naturally like to be engaged in the more important agenda of finding a mate. Often we are engaged in useless and futile conversations with ourselves. We often want to send our mind on a brief vacation. Minds that are on short vacation often yield very useful results. You may send your mind on short vacation, but don’t let anyone eat your head.