From Whence We Came, Part 2

The Ancestral Mind: Reclaim the Power
by Gregg Jacobs, Ph.D.

(Page 2 of 6)

During the past 400 years of material progress, the Ancestral Mind, a more intuitive entity, and one more at home with feelings and images than with facts and figures, spreadsheets and time cards, has been increasingly relegated to the attic, like some unhinged and embarrassing relation in a gothic novel.

As we'll explore in the chapters that follow, the Ancestral Mind exists just below conscious awareness. It inhabits the brain alongside the Thinking Mind, operating as a separate but related system. The Ancestral Mind is the preverbal part of the brain, the part that guides us through feeling and sensing, and that motivates us to act through the emotions rather than through conscious, rational processes. It relies more on experiential knowledge than on reason. It perceives the "big picture" rather than depending on an intellectual understanding based on a few selected details. It often expresses itself through instincts and intuitions that "put all the pieces together." It is also the reservoir of memories from our own childhood as well as those from our distant collective evolutionary past. As such, it is a source of wisdom and joy, and it provides a solid grounding in times of stress. But most important-and central to the argument of this book-the Ancestral Mind is the part of us that has always been charged with looking out after our fundamental well-being. That was its job through millions of years of the history of humanity, before the Thinking Mind came along to capture the limelight.

Let me assure you, though, that by urging that we reclaim an evolutionarily older part of ourselves, I'm not suggesting that we go back to subsisting on roots and berries and living in grass huts. And rest assured that the Ancestral Mind is not some fuzzy metaphor concocted by a guy with beads and feathers in his hair, romanticizing a version of the past that never existed. The model of the Ancestral Mind that I describe in this book is based on my own research and clinical practice over the past twenty-five years, including fifteen at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a major teaching arm of the Harvard Medical School. The concept was developed not at a New Age retreat or a Tibetan monastery, but through a synthesis of recent discoveries in neuroscience, psychology, and mind/body medicine.

What excites me most about this research-and what prompts me to write this book now-is the fact that in just the past few years we have finally assembled sufficient data to present the workings of the Ancestral Mind in powerful and convincing detail. Long shrouded in the murky "data" of folk wisdom, Freudian theories, and anecdotal results, the operations of this hidden part of us can now be observed in the laboratory. We can actually describe the neural pathways that take part and see the functioning of structures within this separate system on a computer screen during magnetic resonance imaging.

Up until now, mind/body medicine had two basic methodologies to offer. The first involved retraining the Thinking Mind to cut off or at least minimize the sort of negative thoughts that induce the "stress response," the constellation of physiological reactions that engulf us when we feel anxious. The other was to use what Dr. Herbert Benson called the "Relaxation Response" in order to short-circuit or at least diminish the bodily effects of that unhealthy response to stress. Both methods are highly effective, and in the second half of this book, I review and explain several techniques based on them in the context of the Ancestral Mind.

But the primary purpose of this book is to enhance that repertoire with novel approaches based on a new level of sophistication in understanding the mind/body connection. This knowledge, which allows us to quiet the TM and reconnect with the Ancestral Mind, shifts the focus from the body to the brain, from conscious to unconscious, and from attempts to ward off negative emotions and illness to the effort to promote positive emotions and health. And it does so in an evolutionary context that makes eminent sense.

In modern times, one of the first individuals to articulate the idea that there was more going on in our minds than what passed through conscious awareness was Sigmund Freud. But his concept of the "unconscious" had a dark preoccupation with repressed urges. The same tightly constrained Victorian world that produced Freud also produced Robert Louis Stevenson's story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This novel of two minds inhabiting the same body-one rational and upstanding, the other pulsing with animalistic rage-was representative of the way reason had come to be revered, and of how whatever lay beneath the rational surface-emotions, intuitions, mysteries-had come to be feared. The Ancestral Mind does, in fact, inhabit the same basic real estate as the Thinking Mind, interacts with it, and yet can operate quite independent from it. But it is by no means a raging cesspool of passions that need to be restrained.

The Ancestral Mind is what we see operating when:

• A child plays with a toy in a state of wondrous amazement. She sees the toy for itself and not in terms of its utility, purpose, or relation to anything else. While playing she is unaware of time or sense of self and becomes so completely absorbed in the toy that, to her, it is as alive as she is.

• You are speaking with someone whom you've just met and, although you are not sure why, you take an immediate dislike to him. Through unconscious perception of the person's vocal tone, facial expressions, and body language, you intuitively sense that what he is saying is not what he truly means.

• A hiker stops to watch a pink and orange sunset over snowcapped mountains. The image is so powerful that it commands his attention fully, to the extent of quieting his internal monologue, the constant chatter of the Thinking Mind. In this state of "being" rather than thinking, awareness merges with the present, and the boundaries of self-consciousness disappear. The hiker experiences a feeling of unity, of being a part of something timeless and infinitely greater than the self.

In the chapters that follow, I want to introduce you to the Ancestral Mind in depth: the scientific evidence of its existence, the rationale behind the techniques for accessing it, and a full explanation of the ways it can improve your life by reconnecting you with its power to generate not just better health, but renewed energy, greater concentration, and, ultimately, a more meaningful, joyful life.

© 2003 Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Gregg D. Jacobs, Ph.D., is assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, senior research scientist at Harvard's Mind/Body Medical Institute, a research scientist at the Laboratory of Neurophysiology at Harvard Medical School, and the author of Say Goodnight to Insomnia.