The brain is a hunting instrument. All three brains hunt for significance in the realm that they are open to. So the first brain is open to the outside world and the interface with the outside world and that’s where it hunts for significance. And the same thing is true of the inner senses that begin to develop with the second brain. They are hunting for significance. And then in the third brain we hunt for significance working around the world, what does this mean, how does this happen, etc.?
The major determining factor here for me is the life history of the individual at whatever point we stop at the age of 12, or 20 or 30 or whatever, because here the influence of the limbic brain, the past, I think becomes very, very dominant and increasing so because it is increasingly restrictive. The boundaries, the self-image, the images that we have of ourselves is almost, in most family circumstances, is almost completely prescribed by everything that happens from the moment of conception on, including uterine life and including uterine development. We know now that there are many influences that can be very profound throughout the life of the individual that happened before they were born. So that’s the kind of thing that I mean. In addition there is just the DNA itself and the fact it’s really capacities or lack of capacities is often preset long before we’re born. But then we begin our life experience within the family, with the parents and so on and so forth. You know, the brain is a hunting instrument. All three brains hunt for significance in the realm that they are open to. So the first brain is open to the outside world and the interface with the outside world and that’s where it hunts for significance. And the same thing is true of the inner senses that begin to develop with the second brain. They are hunting for significance. And then in the third brain we hunt for significance working around the world, what does this mean, how does this happen, etc.?
So this hunting is building, there is no way to defy it, at least as an urge. Unfortunately much of parenting is a progressive restriction; don’t do this, do this only this way, this is how you learn, etc., and this just goes on, if anything, layer upon layer upon layer because as the child grows - we can say that for the first year or so all of the attention is really in maturing the first brain sufficient so that the child can walk independently. And then it moves into the terrible twos which is the first cycle into the emotional world of the child beginning to develop. So at each of these stages and then finally the child begins to talk and we see the intellectual unfolding beginning around the age of four generally. But then we go through these cycles throughout the whole of our life so at each of these, depending on the events, depending on what the background has been, depending on the life experiences that are allowed, permitted, encouraged and so forth, all of those bring about this constriction that you are referring to. They say that you can be this but you will never be this and on and on and on. And yet when we look at the capacities that are there in the three brains of a human being we see this immense potential, immense potential.
Mothers know this. Mothers clearly recognize. They know that their son could be President of the United States. I mean they know that. It’s not a hope or anything because it happens. And so it’s there in the potency of that possibility. So those are unfortunately, in most instances, greatly limited by this upbringing by what surrounds the child in these early years and the earlier years are the most important because nothing grows as fast as the brain does in the first year. It never grows so fast again. It never forms so many connections again. So it’s learning capacity, and this again is one of the marvelous things we’re beginning to really look into and see very clearly, that the learning capacity in the early years is astonishing, that a child can learn six languages simultaneously and their 20 year old struggles to get a second language. Same thing with physical skills at the level of 6, 7, 8 year olds, you see this accumulation of increasingly fine coordinated skills that just defy logic when you’re 25 years old trying to learn the same kind of thing. So we have to be appreciative of the unfolding and the speed with which this is unfolding in each of the three brains, or each of these three aspects of our one brain, but we have to see the terrible vulnerabilities that are built into it as well. If it is restricted by the past, if the patterns are repeated and only certainly kinds of openings are allowed then the whole world of abstraction collapses, if it grows to a certain point and then it is cut off by surrounding life.