Month: May 2018

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. So spoke Christ in Revelation 21:6. Although the verse is framed in temporal terms, the suggestion is that of eternity. But what of us? Are we eternal? Were we recruited from a swirling pool of souls, without beginning and without end, and installed into a material body some time before birth? Does our consciousness arise progressively as we are woven together in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13)? Although many faiths and traditions profess views on such things, the Bible remains largely silent on the matter. What we do know is that once we were small and now we are grown, and that growth consists in more than just physical dimensions. Each of us develop along similar lines, being to one extent or another “normal”. The fact that some diverge from the normal developmental path shows that we are not all the same, and that our experience of reality may differ greatly from that of another. We are, however, all human and subject to the same basic gene stock, and from that template our bones, muscles, sinews, nerves and organs take shape. 

Coincident with this we grow into people. We accumulate likes and dislikes, experience laughter and tears, learn words and movements. That this would be time consuming is reasonable as we are getting used to being alive, learning what it’s like to have senses and a body, discovering what control we have over our limbs and the external world. We could liken this process of development to a coming into focus, a gradual revealing or a dawning from darkness into light. This is the origin of the term Enlightenment which has been defined as “insight or awakening to the true nature of reality”. As the years go by we pass through many stages of development on this journey of enlightenment, each of which corresponds with a perspective on reality or a level of conscious awareness. 

It might be suggested that prior to birth our state is identical to that at death, and that research into near death experiences might shine a light on this nascent phase of existence. Near death experiences are often accompanied by out of body experiences, during which the subject is able to view themselves from an external perspective. This was the outcome for Tony Cicoria, an Orthopaedic Surgeon from Upstate New York, who described how his perception of consciousness during this episode was perfectly normal, and yet he was able to watch people trying to resuscitate his unconscious body. His consciousness was situated in a location in space past which people were walking, and he could direct his vision towards them and follow them with his eyes as they moved past. Experiences such as this have caused people to muse about the true location of consciousness. Is it really situated in the brain? What is the nature of the link between the brain and consciousness and is it possible that our bodies are operated from a remote location? 

On further reflection we might notice that this distinction between the body and consciousness is an anomaly. Our consciousness is affected by what happens to our body. We drink too much coffee and are unable to fall asleep. We are scheduled for an operation and are rendered unconscious by the general anaesthetic. We ingest a substance and enter an altered state of consciousness. So, whether out of body experiences provide evidence for the existence of a separate “me” or not, we must admit that our general participation in the here and now is neuro-chemical in nature.  

The infant at birth is a sensorimotor organism which possesses neither linguistic ability or an appreciation of time. They have no sense of the subjective dimension but exists in a sensoriphysical space. As Piaget put it, “The self is here material”. As time progresses they learn that they are separate from the physical world, still later that they are emotionally differentiated from those around them, including their mother. These mark the first three stages of personal development as defined by Margaret Mahler, Melanie Klein and others. Stage three is the first which allows for introspection, the ability to sense and identify internal physical and emotional states.  

I have vivid memories of two such discoveries, at this stage of development, memories that were given weight by the novelty of the experience. Being carried by my mother at around eight years old I noticed a strange pleasing inner glow as I laid my head on her shoulder. I was familiar with many emotional states common to a child, all of which seemed unremarkable, but this caught my attention. I had become accustomed to musing about the strangeness of existence, about life, consciousness and the material world. Where did they come from and what was their true nature? Societies throughout time who shared this childlike world view also created cultural narratives to explain these things. The First Nations of Haida Gwaii possess a rich mythology with fantastic accounts of the origin of all things. The Mesopotamians of the Euphrates and Tigris basin had their own. The Egyptians another. But going back to that pleasing sensation, how could that be explained? There seemed to be nothing I could draw on from my experience that could begin to account for such a perception. What was the objective difference between that glow and pain, or sadness? I was grasping at air, trying to hold the unsubstantial, attempting to nail spirit to the wall.  

It was a losing proposition. Little did I know that philosophers and scientists, from the time of the Greeks, had been grappling with the same problem. But like this eight year old child they had been unable to construct a satisfactory explanation. The nature of consciousness is still a mystery, unexplained even by the most advanced research techniques and models of neural function. To a child, however, beliefs concerning conscious awareness have yet to solidify. Being raised in an agricultural environment I was accustomed to talking to beings that lacked the ability to understand English. Horses, cows and chickens were my companions, as were the ever present gaggle of family pets. I even remember having a deep discussion with a petit palomino pony about the possibility of life on Mars. 

Add to that the presence in the news of stories describing the benefits of talking to your plants and my imagination really took flight. I talked to African Violets, Dahlias and Horse Chestnut trees. If they were big enough to hug I’d hug them! What I was reconstructing were beliefs held by ancient cultures. Belief in the spirits that inhabited plants, the earth and water. I even had a few pet rocks! Aspects of this thinking were persistent. Even at eighteen years old I believed that my Austin Mini possessed conscious awareness. It did, after all, have electrons flowing through it’s frame. It came alive at the turn of a key and performed tasks as directed, why wouldn’t it be conscious? It all seems so illogical now, but such is the thinking of the agrarian world view. (While those with the rational world view of twenty first century Western culture may scoff at these ideas, there is a growing body of scientific evidence that plants have a form of awareness with at least some of the features possessed by mammals.) 

On another occasion, about a year later, I was playing on the floor of my bedroom when my attention fell on a corner of my bedspread which flowed from the bed and lay diagonally across the carpet. The sun was beaming through the window warming the environment and bringing out the rich greens, blues and highlights of the wool fabric. I was transfixed by the sensation of warmth and coziness instilled by the sight. The sensation was similar to the glow brought on by my mother’s touch, but it was even more intense. My reaction was of confusion and fear. Now that I had two instances of a subjective experience with similar qualities, however, I was convinced that the first was not an anomaly, but an aspect of conscious awareness that might be reproducible. It was certainly desirable to be in that state, but I had no idea how one might create the conditions for its genesis. 

While the collective musings of humanity may have come up with no explanation for why, objectively speaking, something might feel good or bad, we do understand the neuro-chemical prerequisites to such an experience, and it all has to do with a signalling molecule called Dopamine. It’s not that Dopamine itself creates the conditions for such transcendent experiences, but it does cause electrical signals to propagate through the incentive and reward system, a part of the brain that governs much of human behaviour. It is this electrical activity that constitutes the physical manifestation of the transcendent state.  

My quest to understand what makes us tick inevitably led me to a consideration of neuro-chemistry. Our bodies use chemicals to transmit the electrical signals that create both the objective and subjective state of affairs we call life. Reading up on this stuff is quite the eye opening experience. I remember my incredulity as a teenage boy on learning that there are receptors in the human brain that bind with compounds found in the Opium Poppy (Papaver Somniferum). Was this just a bizarre coincidence, or was there some ancient link (either evolutionary or designed) between plants and animals? It soon became clear that the Opium Poppy was just the tip of the ice berg. Many plants contain substances that perfectly compliment the complex structures embedded in cell membranes throughout our bodies. It is these synergistic relationships that enable the treatment of disease using herbal therapies.

Electrical signal transduction across the synapse

One goal of this book is to openly discuss situations where these plant-based therapeutics have hijacked their hosts and set them on a self-destructive journey that so often ends in death. The aim of this discussion is to get a better handle on why these things cause people so much trouble, and to explore why existing non-drug solutions are effective in addiction recovery. Why is it that belief in a higher power allows an individual to move away from their chemical dependency?

It’s true that many of the compounds abused by humans are made in the lab, but it would be rash of us to underestimate the creativity of nature in this sphere. While the stimulant drug Meth-Amphetamine was first synthesized by the Japanese in the 1930s, it has since been discovered occurring naturally in acacia trees native to Texas, along with its cousin Methyl-EneDioxy-Meth-Amphetamine (Ecstasy or MDMA). Most plant-based compounds which are psychoactive in humans are used by plants as a defense against herbivores, most notably insects. The best known member of this family is Nicotine, which has been used by gardeners as an insecticide for generations. High profile examples of the nicotine family include the Neo-Nicatinoid insecticides, which were recently banned by the European Union due to their devastating effects on bee colonies. How ironic that a compound (nicotine) used by the Nicotiana family as a defense against herbivores has become the most addictive drug known to man.

All psychoactive chemicals interact, in some way, with neural membranes to modulate the frequency of electrical signalling either up or down. Sometimes this is done by binding with receptors that allow charged ions to move into or out of the neuron. At other times they might block or open ion channels (receptor-like structures) with the same effect, or cause a neuron to disgorge itself of a neurotransmitter that then binds with its receptors in the receiving neuron, stimulating an action potential. Because these processes control everything in our bodies from the beating of our hearts to breathing, digestion, reproduction and mood, it’s hard to separate the reality of what we might describe as a subjective (spiritual) state from its neuro-chemical underpinnings.

The cough-suppressant medication Dextromethorphan (DXM) illustrates this quite well. Commonly found in non-prescription treatments for dry cough, DXM is actually a dissociative general anaesthetic. The dose indicated for treating coughs is low enough that most people are free of negative side effects, but higher doses may result in unwanted psychedelic experiences. The related anaesthetic Ketamine was withdrawn from use in adults for this very reason, and is now used only in children and animals. Both of these therapeutics act by blocking one of the Glutamate receptors – the N-Methyl-D-Aspartate (NMDA) receptor.

Glutamate is the most commonly occurring neuro-transmitter in the human brain and one of the NMDA receptor’s primary functions is to maintain the connection between our conscious minds and the realities of our bodies and their surrounding environments. Progressively blocking these receptors with DXM or Ketamine leads to increasing levels of dissociated feeling. Complete blockade of the NMDA channel is not fatal, but does allow consciousness to persist while transporting the mind to surreal realms where the perception of space and time is completely transformed. While in this state one subject described living an entire lifetime as paint on a wall! A little reading about DXM reveals its plant-based provenance in that it is the Dextro stereoisomer of the synthetic opioid Levomethorphan. It has the same chemical formula as Levomethorphan but is its mirror image. This structural difference vastly changes the way it interacts with neurons – although technically an opioid it doesn’t bind with opioid receptors at all.

The scale and complexity of receptors is mind-boggling. Take for example this crystallographic model of the NMDA receptor:

N-Methyl-D-Aspartate (Ionotropic Glutamate) Receptor

This receptor is a protein that is synthesized from a single member in the human genome. It’s a pretty smart little machine. It contains a central Calcium ion channel that is opened or closed depending on how the filaments of the protein are stretched out or compressed. The stretching or compression of the filaments, known as a conformational change, depend on how the atoms in other molecules line up, and how their electrical charges attract or repel the corresponding atoms in the receptor. The NMDA receptor is agonized (activated or opened) by Glutamate and held shut by DXM and Ketamine (as well as laughing gas, PCP and other compounds). Unlike most receptors the NMDA receptor will not open when bound by Glutamate alone – it also requires the presence of the amino acid Glycine. Despite its undeniable complexity it is so tiny that you’d have to line up 10,000 of them in a row to equal the thickness of a human hair.

In order to get some inexpensive practical experience working with the processes and mechanisms underlying addiction I decided to write a simulator called Neuralsim. I just released an updated version today which you’re welcome to play with. It runs in a web browser on pretty much any platform, although it’s optimized for smart phones and tablets. The concepts underlying this simulator are as follows:

• A single generic neuron type is presented into which you can insert plug-and-play components.
• The neuron is preceded by a synapse on the other side of which is the axon terminal of the preceding neuron.
• You are responsible for adding synaptic vesicles containing neurotransmitters to the upstream neuron. You must also add receptors to the downstream neuron. You can do this via the Receptors page.
• The neuron won’t fire if it doesn’t have a good supply of ions to work with. You can set ion levels using the Electrolytes page.
• Ion channels are always required, in addition to receptors, to ensure the signal is propagated properly. VGCA Ion Channels must be added to the upstream neuron in order for the synaptic vesicles to release their neurotransmitters. CNG Ion Channels must be added to the downstream neuron if you want your metabotropic receptors to work. You can add both of these using the Channels page.
• You can also add various therapeutic agents to the fluids surrounding the neuron. These include stimulants, pain killers, anti-psychotics and sedatives. These can be added using the Therapeutics page.
• You likely won’t want to do any of these things, so I’ve created a list of presets from which you can import your neuron parameters. Select the “Click here for help” link at the top of the main page to find out how.

While this simulator emulates the low-level functioning of a single neuron, it can’t explain concepts such as mood, emotion, motivation and desire. To explore these ideas we’ll have to look at how millions of neurons are combined to form the many different organelles making up the human brain (something tackled in the book). It does, however, illustrate how combining various therapeutics can have negative effects. Bad outcomes from drug combinations usually stem from under-stimulation or over-stimulation, so if your neuron won’t fire you may have discovered a lethal drug combination.

Disclaimer: As this app is in the early stages of development I can’t guarantee that all combinations of components will work together, however, the presets are working (mostly).

Technologies Used (for geeks only)

I created the following components to support some pretty heavy resource requirements. (I might use these neurons for some artificial intelligence applications later on.) For that reason the neuron activity is performed on a remote server.

Server Side:

• Neural Activity Library: A Java/Maven project that’s imported into the neural simulator.
• Neuralsim: A Spring MVC based API that uses Jackson for JSON marshalling/unmarshalling.
• Google Cloud Services: Neuralsim is hosted on Google’s App Engine. This provides dynamic provisioning should the processing or storage requirements get out of hand. The Neural presets are stored in Google’s Firebase real-time JSON datastore.
• Eclipse IDE

Client Side:

• Ionic 2 iOS/Android hybrid development environment for progressive web apps.
• Angular 2 JavaScript/TypeScript framework
• Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud
• Microsoft Visual Studio Code

(I realize that sharing random snippets from my book begs some context. Let me provide this by answering the following rhetorical questions – why am I writing it, why is it important and what is it useful for? In addressing the subject at hand I’ll be breaking certain taboos. This is, in my view, the only way to move past the superficial and begin an authentic discourse on life’s struggles.)

Being the inhabitant of a human brain and body I’ve been dumbfounded by my inability to meet my own expectations in many areas of life. In elementary school my desire was to avoid punishment, but the need for novelty and stimulation often won out over the guidance provided by my teachers. While this never led me to engage in illegal activities, the Principle at my school did say this to my mother during a parent-teacher interview:

“I’ve met boys like Stuart before, one of them came at me with a knife and I broke his arm! Just think of all the terrible things he’s done at home. He’ll go to jail for sure.”

The worst thing my mother could remember was my picking paint off the wall in the bathroom.

The principal was basing his assessment of my character on a couple of incidents: one in which I hid a thumb tack in Plasticine and put it on a chair, and another when I took a reel of fencing wire and inserted the ends into a 240v power outlet. No harm came to anyone in either of these cases. Had I plugged one end of the fencing wire into the live receptacle I would have been the one electrocuted, but providentially I had plugged them into the neutral and the ground. As I was only six years old I didn’t realise that there was such a distinction. In order to use the event to communicate the seriousness of my action, and provide an object lesson, the principle announced at an assembly of the whole school the next day

“I’ve bailed out of a fighter plane on fire at 8,000 feet, I’ve been shot down behind Japanese lines, but I’ve never been as afraid as when I pulled those wires out!”

What was it that motivated me to behave this way, and is it even possible to be “obedient”? The contrast between my behaviour at school and at home was certainly because I found school to be torture, whereas home was a place of solace and creative play. My misbehaviour at school was a desperate attempt to escape boredom.

While behaviours, such as harming others, can always be judged as unnecessary, destructive and cruel, the seriousness of a misdemeanour may be judged quite differently by two different people, or by the same person at different times. A case in point – Marijuana becomes legal in Canada as of July 1^st 2018. Currently, the possession of up to 30 grams of dried Marijuana is a summary offense, one for which you are convicted without appearing before a judge and jury. It still results in a criminal record (and all the restrictions that come with that), but the offense is regarded as less significant than an indictable one. While this is the view of the governing authorities until July 1^st, many of the general public believe that the law denies them the right for compassionate access to a necessary therapeutic drug. This has inspired some to open illegal “dispensaries” or “compassion clubs” across the country which are subject to closure by the police (an event that happens rarely enough to make the operation of such businesses a viable activity). From the dispensary operator’s perspective the law itself is at fault. A challenge for the government, after July 1^st, however, is what to do with the criminal records of those convicted under the old law.

There are many examples of this values-based plasticity that can be observed in the work place, the home, church and elsewhere. In some cases judgment and censure may result from the kind of mood the authority figure is in at the time of the infraction. In others it may be due to ignorance of the facts or a misinterpretation of the evidence. If our goal is to always do the right thing, however, we are going head to head with at least three separate principles:

1, Our nature, which seeks reward regardless of the conventions or consequences.
2, The fickle aspects of human judgment we share with the people in our lives.
3, The knowledge that the activity we are engaging in is against the rules in some way.

As a child of one of our friends once shared with his mother “mom, it’s so easy to be bad and so hard to be good”.

In his autobiography Benjamin Franklin describes a similar experience in his struggle with pride (one of the Seven Deadly Sins of Christian tradition):

“In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

If that isn’t hard enough, what about the things we do wrong that we didn’t know were unlawful? We are still guilty even though we weren’t aware of the offense. Once the infraction is identified to us we can own it and admit our responsibility, but what if it was never revealed to us? In that case we would be guilty and unable to make restitution. The reason these things are important is that there are real-time consequences to our behaviour. Relationships (and our physical bodies) are extremely vulnerable to certain behaviours, and life is all about relationships, one way or another. As Benjamin Franklin also wrote:

“I grew convinced that truth, sincerity, and integrity, in dealings between man and man, were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life; and I formed written resolutions, which still remain in my journal-book, to practice them ever while I lived. Revelation had indeed no weight with me, as such; but I entertained an opinion that, though certain actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them, yet probably those actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they were beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the circumstances of things considered.”

Interpreting this statement in the language of Non-Violent Communication we see two classes of strategy for meeting our physical, emotional and psychological needs. There are those actions which meet our needs but are destructive, and those that do the same but are beneficial. In the broader scheme of things, living an authentic life is not about a cut and dried distinction between right and wrong. We can’t overcome our natural tendencies and navigate the vicissitudes of human existence by will power alone, by telling ourselves “don’t do that”. But if we admit our own limitations and embrace the fact that, as fallible human beings, we are bound to mess up, what is the solution? (You’ll find the answer in the book!)

One thing that’s certain, is that we will meet our needs either beneficially or destructively. When needs go unmet the state of dysphoria within is almost palpable – it’s a state that cannot be sustained. Identifying the difference between destructive and beneficial ways of meeting needs takes practice, and destructive strategies are usually the easiest to implement. The destructive strategy involves very little short-term cost to the individual and fulfills its purpose quickly. Time, education and wisdom are needed to identify and implement a beneficial strategy. The six year old “me”, in the classroom, chose the quick fix of risk taking and novelty seeking behaviours to create a state of being (excitement/engagement) that the school environment had failed to provide. This state of being was a function of neural activity inside my nascent brain.

The quintessential quick fix for most unpleasant mental states is psychotropic drug use. Consider this quote from a post on the Humans of New York Facebook page from yesterday (May 1st):

“I was raised with that Jewish intellectual worship of knowledge. But all my professors in college were small-minded [people] getting off on their own power, wanting me to parrot them while telling me they didn’t. So I decided I was a nihilist and that I was going to do as many drugs as possible. If the goal is to spend your whole life trying to get rewards to trigger chemicals in your brain, why not go straight for the chemicals? But that didn’t work out very well. It quickly became less of a philosophy, and more of a massive drug addiction.”

This individual sidestepped the education system, and used their knowledge of the brain’s operation to create a quick solution. Instead of gaining the skills required to create a rewarding life he went for the reward immediately, with devastating consequences. Drugs fake the experience of meeting needs, and the withdrawals render the state after using worse than the state before. Sadly drug use has become the default life strategy for many in North America, to the point where in British Columbia, in December 2016 alone, 142 people lost their lives to drug overdoses (922 deaths for the whole of the year). In the USA for the whole of 2016 the death toll is estimated to be between 59,000 and 65,000. Meanwhile in Portugal (a country with more than twice the population of British Columbia) the death rate from overdoses has dropped to 30 per year. The turn-around in Portugal is due to the de-stigmatization of drug use, a redesign of the medical and legal systems, and the legalization of all drugs (more about that in the book).

The questions I attempt to answer in “The Science of Spirituality” relate to neuro-physiological function. What is reward and why is it so alluring? What is the correlation between a spiritual practice and neuro-chemistry and why is a reliance on a higher-power taught by so many drug and alcohol recovery programs? For an increasing number of people, understanding these issues has become a matter of life and death.