Sir Galahad was, according to legend, the only Arthurian Knight to succeed in the quest for the holy grail.
He succeeded for one reason, and one reason alone — he was pure of heart. None of the other knights were completely pure, but he was. None of them deserved to find the grail, and so they didn't.
The conundrum is this. How can any virtue (such as honesty, for instance, or humility) have any impact on dissolving suffering (which is holy grail enough for us, I feel) when every quality that a human can have, is fake, because the human self is fake?
Try and get a good look at this problem, because it's a serious one. How can a person be honest if they are themselves a lie? How can a person be genuinely humble if they themselves are just a fiction anyway?
And even if they can be honest, or humble which is quite an 'if', why would it possibly matter?
Moreover, any virtue (such as honesty) can of course be exaggerated into a shrill, superficial, agonised display, fuelled by rage, or sorrow, or both.
What we've seen is that the left hemisphere (the dishonest one that's setting everything in terms of division, and mind) passes certainty across the corpus callosum — the connective tissue that binds the hemispheres together. The right hemisphere receives this certainty, and does what it does — which is to say, fills it in.
So the left hemisphere gets to 'set the terms' in which the right hemisphere can operate. And the fascinating thing is this — from this process you can derive a completely new understanding of virtue, and the power of genuine morality.
It's quite simple. If the left hemisphere (the mind) has a set series of beliefs that it lays claim to, it will get the right hemisphere to fill in the whole experience of life in such a way that confirms those beliefs.
The entire perception of life, from a human's point of view, is fundamentally constrained by the assumptions they refuse to question.
This is something that is highly visible in people with very extreme beliefs. You can see how they handle challenges, information that undermines their extreme positions. And they handle it by, if possible, just ignoring it, regardless of how incredibly profound the challenge is.
Ignoring problematic things is very easily done, and bears the hallmarks of left-hemisphere thinking. The easiest way to do it is to categorise. This is like that. This fits in that box, or this box. And because I've already got my opinions about that box pre-prepared, I can just roll those out, consider the case closed, and move on to the next thing.
It's quite incredible to see the overwhelming desire in many people to have things be old. To have things be 'seen before' and not new, especially ideas. To box ideas up in this bracket or that, and then blithely move past them. It's easier to see in others, and sometimes quite crude, but sometimes it is sophisticated too.
To box off things as seen and done, no matter how new, or how obviously radical, or revolutionary. This is incredibly common, and it takes an uncommon person to step back from that lazy temptation, and genuinely consider a new idea, or ideas. But then, because it is so rare, it is also so precious too, and in this lies hope for any who are serious about what's really going on, as opposed to merely working to maintain a thin facade of rationality, over a far less exalted truth.
The curious thing though is that such a mindset, which seems so locked down and rigid, is actually very fragile, especially to what other people are thinking. And if there are enough people who are genuinely interested in the truth, and aren't prepared to just cast aside insight in the name of vanity, those people who do move to the attack.
And interestingly enough, the way in which ideas are often attacked is that the person who can't ignore it anymore adopts, as a kind of mental vengeance, even more extreme beliefs (such as conspiracy theories, demonisation or what have you) about the person who is issuing the challenge.
This is the process we have discussed at work — that human beings experience life only within the boundaries of what they will allow themselves to consider, and many work very hard to box off, close off, and even attack, any breaches in their apparent understanding, regardless of the truth of things.
This is something that effects us all. It's not something that only extremists do — it's just more visible in extremists. It is instead, the fundamental lens of human perception — that our assumptions bind our experience of life into their boundaries.
That's the bad news. Here's the good. There's quite a simple way around this. Socrates' most famous quote “I know only that I know nothing” strikes right to the bone of it.
If the left hemisphere — the mind itself, the fake mind — has, as a guiding assumption, that its knowledge is incomplete, then that opens the terms in which the right hemisphere is allowed to operate.
This is why genuine honesty — even by a fictional self — has a very real effect.
If you — as a fiction — have, as part of that fiction, a genuine interest in what is actually going on, you pass that genuine interest over the corpus callosum. The right hemisphere, quite happily and very effectively, just works within the terms set for it, and gets to work. But what terms does genuine interest in the unknown set for the right hemisphere?
It sets the terms wide open. It opens the doors of perception, if you will, opens the terms in which the world can be seen. It is a looking to see what's really going on.
It's a weird thing that a genuine interest can have this effect, because of course, the self that has this interest is fictional — but the right hemisphere doesn't know that, and doesn't care. It just fills things in with contour, and quality, with shape and definition, giving accurate contour to whatever it is directed at.
Even though the self is a fiction, within that fiction, if honesty is genuine, honesty works for real.
It's also why fake interest doesn't work. It's why you can't cheat the system. You can't fake it till you make it. It has to be genuine, it has to be real.
If you try to ‘fake’ honesty by adopting exaggerated, extreme postures of being really honest, or caring so, so, so much about the truth, the truth, the truth… then what is being passed across the corpus callosum?
What is being sent across to the right hemisphere to fill in?
Simply that fiction of an exaggerated, utterly interested, you. And the right hemisphere fills that in, just like it always does, and makes it just one more vivid display of a striving, noble self. And so, from this new perspective, you can now see exactly why it is that fakeness and hypocrisy are the traps they are. Whatever we are genuinely doing, gets filled in with all the detail the right hemisphere can muster.
If you're genuinely just on an ego trip, the right hemisphere fills in that ego trip, and makes it powerful, vast, and all-consuming. But if you genuinely have any interest whatsoever in what's really going on, the right hemisphere field of vision is opened right up.
An amazing new way of looking at what's really happening with human virtue, human fakeness, human honesty. We all get what we're genuinely after. And if we're genuinely just after self-aggrandisement, that's what we get, and we get it in spades, to the exclusion of joy, life, and a true experience of living.
If we're genuinely after the truth, we get the truth. And this is hardwired. To use a way of looking at this from computing, this isn't software. This is hardware. This isn't the kind of thing you can hack, or get around in some way.
But — and just like a computer — if you understand the hardware, you can do a lot with the software.
The solution to the Galahad Conundrum is exactly this. Many people, following many different wisdom traditions, see ‘getting the holy grail’ as a direct consequence of ‘being pure of heart’. As such, the focus in almost all of them, from a practical point of view, is to become Galahad. To become totally pure, extremely virtuous, utterly moral. And then, when you hit a certain ‘level’ of moral, you get the prize.
The problem with this should, from this new perspective, be pretty obvious, and it's this. That trying to 'become Galahad' is a totally self-focused thing. It's all focused on you, focused on your virtue, your goodness, you being moral, you being pure.
And all this does — and all this can ever, ever do — is to pass ever more shrill and extreme postures across the corpus callosum, for the right hemisphere to dutifully colour in.
It is an agonising trap — but there is a kind of justice to it as well. Even in terms of morality (in fact, especially in terms of morality) being self-centred hurts.
So, you can't just get really extreme about virtue. Big doesn't work here. What does work here, is genuine. What works is real.
Real is not like big. This strikes to the heart of the new way of looking at human life. It is such a fundamental confusion, and so rapidly picked up and used. I have to care what the truth is? Fine — I'll care massively! I'll care so much! I'll throw hatred and scorn at every part of myself that doesn't care! That'll show 'em!
The Galahad Conundrum — trying to 'be Galahad' sets terms for the right hemisphere that the right hemisphere colours in. A vivid, tortured, striving, noble you.
However. If you have genuine honesty, no matter how small, that's something that right hemisphere will fill in as well. Curiosity about the world, about life, about what is actually happening. If that's a virtue, if that's passed across the corpus callosum, the focus of attention of the right hemisphere is now no longer totally subsumed into filling in the self.
How do you make it genuine?
Well, again, it's not that hard to understand how to do this, when you understand what the brain is fundamentally doing, which is creating a display, for the benefit of others. The desire to display virtue, to do good things publicly and be recognised for them, is very strong in humanity. This is because display is, from an evolutionary point of view, what all the noise, conflict and pain of human life is about about anyway.
But it also means that private virtue, any virtue practised in private when no-one is watching, has a very different quality to it. And because publicity is the point of exaggerated, delusional displays of virtue, the degree to which any virtue is private is the degree to which it is genuine.
And now we come to another totally new way of looking at virtue. The importance of private virtue, and the destructive nature of virtue for the sake of publicity.
What do you do when no-one else is watching? When all the arguments have died down, when everyone's gone to bed, and you're just lying there in the dark, and you look back on all the divisions of the day?
Do you, in that place, have any real interest at all in what really happened? Do you ever question your own version of events? Do you ever think “let's try and see it from their point of view…”?
I certainly hope you do sometimes, because it would be sad if you didn't. But that — that's all we're really talking about here, just that simple thing. When no-one else is around, when you're on your own, do you question? Do you question your own beliefs? Do you have any real curiosity about the truth of things? Have you ever had? Do you climb, as best you can, inside the perspectives of others? Do you ever do this?
The good thing is that most people do. Most people have something genuine about them, some things that they actually do for real.
And this leads us to a fresh and far more promising perspective on the power of human virtue. No longer must it be a millstone around the neck, extreme and huge, a great weight of responsibility to be good that we carry with us. It becomes something else, something much smaller, and yet at the same time, far more powerful.
It becomes something different. A new way of understanding goodness, and the power of goodness. You don't buckle and strain anymore under the burden of your attempts to finally, finally be good enough. Good enough is any level of goodness that is real.
And then all of a sudden, a weight falls from your shoulders. You're no longer seeking to power your life by making yourself better and better, when nothing is ever good enough. Instead, you can let it go, and just keep that part of goodness that you can't let go of anyway.
We don't need to work at having genuine curiosity about the way the world is, or life, or humanity. We all had it once — as children. And it didn't go away. It just got buried under the old ways, the ways of striving and struggling, and never being good enough.
Virtue works when it's small and real, like a seed. When it's big and fake, it consumes. And from this perspective, we can start really getting clarity on the deeps of humanity itself, and look to move beyond old baggage, old wounds, old failures, old pain.
The bar is set low. You don't need to be Galahad — and it's useless and counterproductive to try. You don't need to be extremely virtuous. Any level of virtue, be it honesty, courage, curiosity — anything — that is actually genuine will do the trick, no matter how small.
Humility is another amazingly powerful asset, if real. If fake, it is easily crafted into a great show, an extreme and exaggerated posture. “I know nothing. I will never know anything. It's a fool who tries to find anything out. Nothing is possible for me, because I don't have the talent, or I'm too messed up, or too small. I'm just happy to look at others who are so amazing, and I'm so humble that I don't feel jealous. And I'm so humble that I say this.”
What's really obvious to everyone else, but not to the person saying this, is that in such cases — and because of the power of the old ways of thinking, such cases are many — humility becomes just one more form of arrogance, that stifles life. And with the new perspective that we have on the brain, we can see, for the first time, exactly why this is.
All that such a person is passing across to the right hemisphere is that image, the image of them, the utterly humble. Extremely humble, amazingly humble. And this is all passed across with the force of total certainty, because that's the only way the left hemisphere knows how to communicate.
And so it gets filled in, and expanded, and made larger and more compelling. And then, a person's entire world becomes constrained by that image — by the limits that image sets. And there's something new to be seen here as well - those limits grow and grow, making that world smaller and smaller.
As the right hemisphere fleshes out the image, the left hemisphere is able to make it even more extreme. So whereas a person might start saying "I'll never be able to juggle, because I'm not that coordinated", if that person then starts making a display of that humility, something for public consumption, that display grows. The humility is made bigger, and more fake. It swallows more things inside it, as a parasite, feeding.
And in a very real way — seen clearly for the first time — it can take over a human being. And it all comes down to fakeness. Ultimately, such a person ends up paralysed. And because they're now too humble ever to try anything new, or look at anything they don't already understand, they never develop any skill, or ability, to a level that can really make an impact on the world, or their own lives.
Fake virtue is a very potent poison. Perhaps the most potent, if it's the soul we're looking at, and not the body.
But the new power of virtue works when a virtue is genuine. So let's see what happens if humility is small and genuine. level of genuine humility, no matter how small, opens up a human's experience of reality, and breaks the constraints.
It works in a very similar way to what we've just seen — if you have no humility whatsoever, or if your humility is superficial, fake, and exists only to display to others how humble you are, this is what is being passed across the corpus callosum, and so this is what gets filled in with detail — the posture, the display.
If, however, there is any level of genuineness to your humility, any level at all, then you are passing, across the corpus callosum, the idea that you do not know everything, and might well be wrong. This opens up the ability of the right hemisphere to find new connections, and break new ground in understanding what is really going on.
To learn new things. To open up new options. To see new and incredible vistas of reality. To make sense of seeming chaos, and to live a life that is always fresh, and always new. You don't need to chase novelty, because life will always be fresh and novel. And better than this, because what is seen is not unseen, and so as life continues, it gets richer, deeper, and never loses its ability to amaze.
But there's something else to see as well. Because as well as this new way of living, there's another thing that can be done as well. A way to undercut suffering at source. You need the power of genuine virtue, but if you have any level of genuine virtue at all, you can dissolve needless suffering, forever.