[First published in TNTC Vol. 1, No. 7 Mar. '90]

MIND/BRAIN BEHAVIORS: Why Some Citizens of Gotham Fear Batman And Draw Reactionary Cartoons About Him

by Mandelbrot Tripper

Brain wave patterns... What can we really tell from brain-wave patterns? Do they describe us like the secret pages of diaries to which we've been given the key? Is everything that we are, reducible to the curves and squiggles mapped by an electroencephalogram? Or, are such patterns deceptive partial registries through clumsy contrivances, of complex processes in no way obliged to open an accurate correspondence with any set of needles that jump—in their characteristic way—to the presence of those processes?

Certainly there must be more than an accidental or casual relation between the recording device and the processes recorded. "This conclusion is granted by virtue of the recent history of biofeedback experimentation, in which we come to see that, not only do such marks appear in response to the objective dimension of a conscious activity but may be used to induce, control (to a variable degree) and regulate the subjective character of that activity.

Thus there's certainly a connection of more than evidential value; such marks don't merely comprise incident impression of a disturbance like scorched trees from the passage of a meteorite in no way serving to reconstitute its identity, aside from testifying to the fact it was there (nor displaying any power to induce repetition of the phenomenon for observation). On the contrary, the patterns produced on the EEG meter, Mind Mirror etc. quantitatively register what may certainly have qualitative significance, in measuring and formally regulating the rich experience of consciousness to which they correspond.

We needn't assume the reductionist attitude at all, in confrontation with the prospect of — "brain-wave measurement" etc. We needn't fear that conscious processes will be manipulatively reduced to fluxes proving out the hypothesis of behavioral determinism on a graph; for, even where the behaviorists seek to use such patterns and their interpretations in this way, one of the factors illuminated by those years of experimentation is the presence of the mediating variable, the pivot on which all interaction between conscious states and quantifiable measurement turns—the factor of volition, the element of creative indeterminacy associated with the cerebrospinal or conscious axis itself.

The modification of conscious states correlated with regulation of the so-called autonomic or involuntary processes, is irreplaceably dependent on the alertness, cooperation, quality of attention, degree of determination and coherence-of-intent demonstrated by the subject in whom such modifications are to be induced; all these factors represent nonlinear degrees of freedom in the central value of consciousness, which in totality spells out the presence of will.

How To Make A Zombie

To be sure, the control-minded researches of behaviorists mordantly in love with their manipulative work, have certainly "shown" that will in a certain sense corresponds reductively to brain-sites, electrochemical patterns etc.; the genteel art of lobotomization (and other less-well known but furtively existent programs of our behaviorist espionage fraternities across both seas) certainly seems to support a dry determinism, bringing rigid objectivists as close to joy as their passionless outlook would ever allow.

And yet the celebration is premature, as a closer or initiated study of the feedback and biomedical literature will certainly show.

Surgery and chemical alteration may mimic the scenario of pure "roboticism" equating the value of consciousness itself with manipulably mechanical processes; yet even the apparent helplessness of a brutally-modified mind unable to act with the "independent" or self-generating consciousness we associate with will, only demonstrates that the factor of will is hidden—masked by a bio-mechanical circumstance in which the value of conscious indeterminacy (definitionally comprising the being of the living subject) can only act in acceptance of an induced pattern, on a one-to-one basis, so that such a pattern efficiently performs as an uncontested instruction. That value of conscious indeterminacy informing the very, living focus of even the surgically-modified subject has been artificially deprived—in effect—of one of the mirror components of its operative process whereby it may ordinarily reflect any input through an equipotential contrariety of impressions made mechanically available as cancellating patterns through connective retrieval systems now fatefully impaired.

Thus being in effect imprisoned in a circuitry comprising a single-phase mirror reflectively reinforcing the imperative impression, the conserved value of conscious indeterminacy (always present and equivalent to the irreducible factor of will) nonetheless can conceive no choice but to ratify the input which acts as a volitional suggestion from the "outside".

Thus it's not that "will" is absent or excised even in these extreme cases of an invidious mechanical deprivation; yet its presence is masked by the apparent, deterministic or one-to-one correspondence between the given "order" as input, and the inevitable obeyance of the order as behavioral output. The "active" component of consciousness which we identify as the decision making faculty of will, is "folded under" as it were so that its activity seems merely passive and will-less; actually it emanates through all the "activeness" we ordinarily associate with will, since the irreducibly indeterminate value of the conscious void-variable necessarily appropriates the dominating impression even in this case. It's just that its variability-adjustment can only "focus" on and activate the pattern received as a volitional command through the artificial imprisonment of the single-phase mirror brutally fashioned by the surgery or neurochemical manipulation. (This mechanism also accounts for the "will-less" behavior of the so-called zombie state observed particularly in Haiti, the efficient biochemical agent of which has been identified as tetrodotoxin by Wade Davis in his best selling book Serpent and the Rainbow.)

All this dry technical discussion should be of passionate importance to the reader; for what it does, if understood, is give the definitive lie to the objectivist model, the thesis of behavioral determinism in which even consciousness and will are apparently "reduced" to biochemical equations and stimulus-response patterns. Understood, this discussion shows how will, mind, consciousness and ultimately "soul" may be hidden, brutally walled-up or temporarily (but not eternally) imprisoned in such a way as to be largely obscured, and seem indeed not even to be present as any significant factor—and yet may be recognized as always present, irreducibly required in even the saddest performance of the compulsion-circus conducted by certain of those most-unfortunate beings possessing irredeemable slaver-consciousness.

We Return Control Of The Dials

Now back to the Bat-cave. What we've learned at the subterranean meters and dials over the years is that the qualitative experience of our being in terms of perception, feeling, cognition and attention as manifestation of the mind/body whole, can be indicated at least interpretively by the quantitative magnitudes of brain wave patterns on a graph; and we've learned as well that these brain-wave patterns can be positively correlated with changes in metabolic rate, blood chemistry, galvanic response or dielectric skin resistance and nervous system activity.

We've come to learn that the level of awareness may be measured as a norm in the statistical average; and that such a "norm" can constitute a comparative base for identifying altered states of perception and awareness. We've come to learn that all brain-wave activity represents a mixture of operative waves functioning at identifiably discrete cycle-ranges; and that the "normal" activity of waking consciousness statistically portrayed, operates with decided emphasis on the so-called beta-wave patterns which—in the measured norm—tend to overwhelm or "mask" the signals of the other co-functioning brain-wave levels. Only the most sensitive and diversified array of modern instruments detects the simultaneous functioning of the different brain-wave patterns at their respective levels.

The range of Beta activity, then, represents a cognitive standard characteristically emphasizing linear thinking and the domination of abstract-verbal patterns. Beta corresponds to our ordinary conceptual level as sharply emphasized and preferentially isolated. It is therefore easily equated with so-called left-brain activity. Its activation as an alert form of narrow, sequentially analytic focus demonstrates an ordinary correlation between beta/left brain activity and a functional dominance of the sympathetic (or excitatory) branch of the autonomic nervous system.

Therefore a highly mechanical interpretation of these interrelated patterns suggested in the early stages of research that there was a necessary, one-to-one equation between beta/left-brain/ sympathetic system activity. It was only with the later study (conducted basically in the last two decades) of altered or "abnormal" brain-wave patterns as observed in meditators and "yogis" and through the self-monitoring apparatus of biofeedback equipment, that a more sophisticated and creatively variable potential was reported.

It was discovered for example that, through willed changes in forms of focus inducing modified states of awareness it was possible to significantly alter the operative ratio of brain-wave patterns so as to deemphasize the standard dominance of beta, and shift emphasis to the deeper wave-patterns of alpha, theta and delta (ordinarily viewed as "minor" or invisible notes corresponding only to weakly-intermittent and specialized states of profound relaxation, creativity and sleep). It was learned that standard functions of cognition and perception ordinarily associated with a virtually exclusive "beta" pattern, could persist in their active presence and with an even greater degree of proficiency under a wholly altered ratio of wave-activity, in which beta became recessed as an observable type while alpha and even theta patterns were drawn to the fore. Alpha is associated with profound relaxation and in particular with meditative states of consciousness; theta is associated with deeply creative operations verging on the awakened psychism and detected paranormal potential of the delta ordinarily linked with sleep. It was therefore evident that the so-called left/brain functions could continue while integrated into a more gestalt level of awareness progressively identified with right/brain emphasis; and that the operation of left-brain functions while linked with beta needn't depend on the exclusive emphasis of beta as in the observed norm, and so bore no true mechanical correlation with stimuli of the excitatory or sympathetic system.

Indeed the deeper patterns of brain-wave mixture emphasizing the increasingly integral and relaxative functions of alpha, theta and delta also exhibited a proportional shift in emphasis toward a dominance-ratio featuring the parasympathetic or sedative network of the autonomic system.

Correlatively, in the "meditator" subject exhibiting the operation of this nonordinary pattern of brainwave/nervous-system activity, there's noted a marked decrease in blood lactate or acid produced in the anaerobic metabolism of glucose (metabolism performed in the absence of oxygen, as with strenuous muscle exertion). Lactic acid is medically correlated with tension-level; the infusion of lactate in the bloodstream of a normal subject will even induce states of anxiety with no object. The decrease of blood lactate during monitored meditations is associated with increase in oxidative metabolism or the more efficient delivery of oxygen to the skeletal musculature; this in turn is attributed to the reduction in activity of the sympathetic system that secretes the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, responsible for selective constriction of blood vessels.

All such evidence taken together suggests a medical/scientific profile reinforcing precisely what certain esoteric "colleges" as Southern Crown have taught for years without benefit of such strict confirmatory data, i.e. that a transformation in conscious states toward a net increase in awareness and creative efficiency of function relies on a critical shift in the normal operation of nervous systems, from a dominant ratio of emphasis on the excitatory or sympathetic (the reactive, fight/flight complex characterizing the functional norm of the enculturated global cross-section) to an adaptive emphasis on the sedative or parasympathetic.

Such a reordered ratio of emphasis stressing the dominant function of the relaxative system through the subconscious nerve-networks, shows an obvious correlation with the axis of consciousness or the cerebrospinal nervous system.

Alternate Polarization Of The Consciousness-Systems

We may formulate the picture this way: the more direct, holistic, creative and volitional function of consciousness is positively correlated with a specific pattern of autonomic or subconscious- system activity emphasizing the parasympathetic process. The subconscious/autonomic nervous systems act in more direct alignment with, and therefore are more harmoniously integrated as functions of, the conscious or volitional axis when there is established a patterned ratio with emphasis on the sedative (parasympathetic) system. Awakened states of consciousness and more integral values of volition are, therefore, demonstrably identified with a specific range in the ratios of organization between sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the subconscious processes. Conversely it may be posited that the lower levels of awareness emphasizing predominant beta-wave activity through the analytic left-brain, are functions of a chronic neuro-vegetative pattern locking cycles of cognition into narrow focus, surface apprehensions correlated with dominant fight/flight syndromes of the excitatory system.

Lower levels of awareness functioning with left-brain emphasis are then encoded into metabolic patterns of the autonomic processes practically displacing the (multidimensional or whole value) being of volitional consciousness from integral self-congruence with its own axis, in effect polarizing it into relatively primitive codes of identification through vital lock-in rotated opposite the deeper, complementary conformances of the system as a whole. Winding 'round the subject once more: when thought-patterns function at a comparatively low level of harmonic unity exhibiting dim/fluctuating focus in the waking range of awareness (bracketed by "unknown" parameters of the deeper brain-wave cycles operatively recessed), we may say the integral Void-value of consciousness is displaced or drawn off-side, functionally entrapped as a cognitive code configuring the framework of its identity through ratios-of-interaction polarized to viscerogenera of the frontal plexus.

Conversely when the thought patterns are integrated at a high functional level of whole-value awareness operating through an emphasis of alpha, theta and delta cycles, we may say the autonomic processes are harmoniously aligned in an optimum ratio conformably stabilizing conscious Void-value into receptively alert congruence with its own axis, demonstrating in effect that subconscious systems are functions and integral harmonics of the whole-value Consciousness system (or vertical, multidimensional cerebrospinal channel).

The Question Of Void-Consciousness

What, then, we may ask, prevents us from achieving such a maximum stabilization and positively polarized harmony, in which the subconscious or autonomic systems are integrated in subordinative deference to the Value of the conscious axis from whence their polarized currents derive?

We find in the decades of experimentation with brain-wave patterns that, the closer we come to "quantifying" reliable magnitudes of truly awakened/creative activity the more surely we come into contact with the deep theta and delta levels ordinarily associated with unconsciousness and sleep (these levels are so associated precisely because they're commonly beyond conscious range of the beta-intensive framework and so are detectable only when such storms of emphasized activity are silenced in sleep). Thus the deep thetas and deltas are expressions of the dawning, operative value of a directly awakened void-consciousness, i.e. the totalizing value of the cerebrospinal axis through which all cognitive patterns in whatever range are necessarily polarized. Yet void-consciousness, directly known (rather than indirectly employed as the central factor of "indeterminacy" in the fluctuating variables of volitional or willed action) is unmasked from its chronic cover patterns of lavishly self-symbolizing thought. It constitutes, for its own self-reflective mechanism waking up to its central value, precisely the Domain of the Unknown. Being intrinsically indeterminate, "unset", in itself not reducible to knowable pattern or learned program, it represents in its very approach to its own self-apprehension a questionable magnitude. It doesn't arise first of all as a certitude (since "certainty" had long become by default the province of repetitious familiarization) but as a Questionmark. And to the habit of long-accustomed consciousness, a question mark is tantamount to Doubt.

First of all then the levels of theta and delta verging on direct magnitudes of self-revealing void-consciousness, represent to the habituated levels of awareness a critical degree of uncertainty. They comprise the threshold of apprehensiveness, not—first of all—of happy self-recognition. This is the (otherwise inexplicable) reason why, when first exploring the new terrain of brain-wave activity, investigators early came to associate the erratic appearance of theta states exclusively with aberrant emotional episodes. Without benefit of the later studies of meditative consciousness, under ordinary conditions monitoring ordinary subjects investigators soon learned that the interruption of theta-states signaled bouts of fear and anger, generally in accompaniment of buried or suppressed emotions, memories, anxieties etc. Why then later, when extensive monitoring of meditative subjects showed the significant participation of sustained theta patterns with respect to profoundly relaxative states, did there appear to be such a discrepancy with earlier studies of normal (non-meditative) subjects?

What Makes Us Avoid The Void

Initiated interpretation discloses the reason behind the apparent discrepancy, and shows that it isn't a discrepancy at all but a key—a key to unlock the answer as to what may possibly prevent us from achieving the optimum harmony of integrative nervous-systems stably serving the value of Consciousness.

If, as we have seen, deeper theta and delta patterns represent the "unknown" threshold (as harbinger states of direct void-consciousness) then typically during the processes of enculturation when young systems attempt to establish stably reliable memory-patterns of what may be "known", impressions received in the course of learning interpretable as threatening to psychic homeostasis would by tendency reactively encode at the theta level—where first of all they'd be masked out of threatening relation with the stabilizing order of beta-wave patterns, regularly suppressed below the surface of reflective apprehension (thus theta would only tend to erupt, in "ordinary" subjects, under duress of emotional recollection etc.); and where moreover the threatening impression would be filed in the general category of "unknown", i.e. unexpected, unanticipated, unwanted, unpredictable etc.

Indeed this is why theta (and delta) associate with deep creativity; creativity functions most freely and profoundly through direct expression of the indeterminate or "unknown" variable. Therefore it may be inferred that the ordinary processes of enculturation (stabilizing norms of the "known") at the same time tend to post buried/subconscious guardians at deep-level gates of the creatively straining Unknown, tailoring theta-amplitudes—that naturally lap the very beach of creative void-consciousness and all its paranormal correlates—into fierce repelling sentinels of reactive anger-forms, fearful praetorians of self-guarding denial. Thus the enculturation-process as presently practiced and parentally passed on, tends to be distinctly anti-creative. It sets up blocks by actually appropriating the creative wave (the "amplitudes" of void-value) and forcing it to serve as subconscious patrol-unit against itself.

This should however tell us something about what happens when we contemplate the approach to an optimum, positive integration and alignment of the subconscious current-centers with the conscious axis (tacitly provoking the concomitant shift to right-brain, gestalt pattern emphasis and high-creative magnitudes of theta/delta abutting the void-chasm of the Unknown— investigators indeed now posit the appearance of theta and delta activity in healers as precisely a reaching out to incorporate the Unknown). We may see that, in contemplating this salubrious shift there's a lion in the way—a lion which is of course variably larger for some than for others, depending on the established degree of suppression and operative fear-reaction incorporated in the functioning psychic complex. Wherever the hint of that deeper magnitude of Being (corresponding objectively to theta/delta activity) suggests itself, for some the specter of the Unknown becomes immediately overwhelming, too much, and swamps the systems into wholesale reactive fear patterns.

Which brings us to our title subject: Why Some Citizens of Gotham Fear Batman and Draw Reactionary Cartoons About Him.

Skulking Around The Unknown Territory

Consider one who demonstrably operates on a more or less continuous basis through mixture of brain-wave patterns emphasizing theta with even occasional deep delta. Because such a person functions holistically from levels by definition associated with psychic forces and transpersonal "wavelengths" of activity, it's more than likely even the most closed/defensive personality would sense something...the vaguely disturbing presence of just that operative X-the-Unknown factor correlated with Theta etc. Indeed the reactive and syndromatically self-enclosed personality would probably be more likely to sense such supernormal value since in a way he'd be so negatively attuned to that level through the anxious monitor of fear. The deep-seated fear sentinel would be quick to detect the awakened or directly-active presence of that uncommon value through the agency in question. But, being sensitized to such threshold only as subconsciously encoded fear reaction, the subject would identify the active presence of its level in any given case only by that interpretive standard.

The fearful personality could only "intercept" that presence subconsciously as a threat, a potential incursion from an Unknown territory. He would not only be deeply afraid to approach that territory himself; he would tend to dread and fear instinctively anyone subliminally suggesting to him the real, awakened Presence of that "terrible" value. And just who is it our fearful personality instinctively resists, recoils from and holds up the veritable "cross" to? Why, it can only be one fellow after all—for look: the extraordinary and harmonious integration of the full range of brain-wave patterns, Beta, Alpha and Theta, discloses the very uncommon presence of our old friend BAT-man!

The one operating from depths of Theta (and dredging up deep Delta) animates the consciousness of Creativity indicative of awakened magnitudes of Void-Being. Such a BAT-man, while functioning from the Level allowing him to "see" the total pattern (so standing uniquely in the position to protect and defend the citizenry of Gotham) is at the same time the object of an aroused doubt, a startled question mark proceeding precisely from those whose suppressed Theta levels were sprung by inductive proximity and now sound the reactionary alarm as which they were negatively encoded. That such a fearful and reactive personality clearly identifies the presence of an extraordinary power, one which transcends the normative level by leagues, is without doubt; for in his fear he communicates his dubiety to others by portraying the force he reactively intuits (through the alarming presence of BAT-man) as indeed an extraordinary agency. He doesn't portray poor "Bruce Wayne" as an ego dealing with sheer illusion; yet he necessarily depicts the power he perceives through the presence of the big " B " as a force alien and estranged, in precise parallel to the relation our alarmist has with his own deep-level Theta patterns. He can't bring himself in his genuine fear to dismiss the felt threat as a figment, a chimera, so he portrays it the way he senses it through the self-alienated levels of his own being, i.e. as a monster devouring and completely taking over "poor old B", a huge fiery Genie perhaps, with one huge Third Eye singly covering his whole "beetling brow", hrnmm? He draws up this fearful image, straight out of the reactions and vaguely jealous depths of his own psyche, and seeks to persuade all those open to the liberative awakening (made finally accessible and eminently available through the demonstrable presence of Gotham's good friend BAT-man), that his own low-level state of integration represents the measure of the world—and that the horrible monsters, the broken forms he conjures straight from his own psyche, are somehow correspondences of what exists through a Creatively Awakened Being in every way beyond his comprehension.