I call a “mental reflex” the immediate mental reaction to any event in terms of thoughts and emotions. As a person strives to advance spiritually, this first reaction and its after-effects need to be replaced with what I would call a “spiritual reflex”.
Wikipedia describes a reflex as “an involuntary, unplanned sequence or action and nearly instantaneous response to a stimulus”.1 And it then goes on to list multiple physical reflexes that are observed in humans. Clearly, the mind also reflexively reacts to events. In response to an event that even mildly affects a person, the mind immediately has a reaction in terms of thoughts and emotions.2 More thinking, reflection, and rationalisation may follow the initial reaction and try to modify or moderate it. However, the first mental reflex will often dominate and decide how a person feels about the event long after it has happened. And unless the person strongly resists this thought or has external constraints that stop him, this reaction would also likely shape his actions. So, the initial mental reaction becomes a strong predictor of how a person might react physically too.
Spiritual reflexes can overcome negative mental reflexes
Once a person practices spiritual techniques like TAME, he starts seeing a spiritual reflex in addition to the mental reflex described above. When used, a spiritual reflex typically follows a mental reflex with a slight delay, which could be just a split second or much longer. Spiritual reflexes aim to channel the thoughts and emotions of the mental reflex — for example, into the spiritual breath (using spiritual techniques like TAME). So, the spiritual reflect transcends the mental reflex by casting it away. In so doing, the spiritual reflex counters the initial mental reflex at a deeper level rather than at a shallow level such as reasoning or logic.3 Once the mental reflex is cast away, the mind becomes like an open canvas to foster fresh thoughts. The thoughts and emotions of the mental reflex may be stubborn and keep coming back and may need spiritual reflex to be deployed again and again. Or, the mind could get distracted and lose interest, thereby letting the spiritual reflex to dominate or at least fight the mental reflex into a stalemate.4
The initial mental reflex is at an emotional level. Logic and reasoning operate at a more shallow level of the mind and are usually not as powerful as emotions in deciding our thoughts and actions. This may be because one needs to expend conscious effort to build logic while emotions emerge spontaneously and instinctively. A change in reasoning or new information could change the logical conclusion of a person. In contrast, emotions are entrenched and refuse to be unseated unless stronger emotions cast them away. Indeed, emotions may “guide” logical thinking, for example, by making a person ignore evidence that contradicts them.5 Because the spiritual reflex operates at a deeper level, it is more likely to neutralise the mental reflex than logic.6
The battle of the reflexes
The mental reflex is the first, emotional reaction. It is usually selfish and a deep reflection of a person’s survival (even animal) instincts. The spiritual reflex is a learned, slower reaction. It is usually a selfless push that prioritises high principles and wellbeing of others over the self.
A person who tries to advance spiritually will feel these two reflexes battle each other in his mind. This battle could also be between the spiritual reflex and the emotional after-effects of the mental reflex. As the spiritual reflexes grow stronger with use and practice, this battle can sometimes seem as ravaging the mind because emotions have strong roots in the mind. However, with practice and patience, the spiritual reflexes start brining more and more mental reflexes under their control. As this change happens, the person starts becoming much happier at at peace. This is a curious outcome. Why would a person who is becoming better at suppressing his most basic wants become happier? Wouldn’t he be happier with his emotions completely ruling his mind and actions? The answer is “no”. I have written on this topic earlier — please refer this article.
Dominance of spiritual reflexes
As a person persists in practice of spiritual techniques like TAME, the spiritual reflexes starts a sort of “proactive patrolling” of the mind. In this stage, strictly speaking, spiritual reflexes are not reflexes any more. They morph into a way by which the mindset during meditational technique of TAME starts expanding into non-meditation time. The meditational breathing starts to become more and more a feature that can be turned on at will and, at times, switches on spontaneously. The mind starts finding happiness in the non-meditational times in a manner similar to how it does during meditational times.7 It starts to use the meditational breathing without conscious effort to protect itself against assaults from strongly negative emotions that it fears and sometimes also from physical pain that it might experience from things like minor bruises.
But this dominance takes some time.This intermediate time is spent in the battle between the two reflexes wherein neither side appears to be able to deliver a knock-out blow. This is a difficult time but persistence in building spiritual reflexes eventually pays off handsomely.
Spiritual reflexes are important
Without spiritual reflexes, our spiritual thoughts would have a weak link with our happiness and behaviour. So, the mind may come up with multiple spiritual ideas and thoughts, but these would remain powerless in the face of the overwhelming strength of mental reflexes. The mental reflexes would continue to drive behaviour under the additional cover of motivated reasoning. As a result, spiritual progress would stall even as a person may believe that he is doing reasonably well from a spiritual perspective.
Spiritual reflexes level the playing field and give the spiritual aspirant a better fighting chance. Here’s my experience of applying TAME: Each time the mental reflex (or its residual emotion) pushes me in a non-spiritual direction, the spiritual reflex can be deliberately harnessed to channel the emotion smoothly into the mind’s eye. The feeling is a bit like grease not being able to stick to teflon, with the emotions being unable to leave a mark and being cast away effortlessly with the exhaled breath.
Closing note: Disciplined reflexes lead to a happier life
The stronger the mental reflex, the more likely a person is to act quickly and rashly. Paradoxically, the stronger the emotion, the more important it becomes for the person to act calmly and rationally. So, another benefit from building spiritual reflexes is that it restrains our initial reaction and trains us to thoughtfully act with genuine calm. Most of us would probably know from experience that such reactions would lead to better outcomes, and thus a better life.
Footnotes
1: As of this writing, in December 2022.
2: A mental reflex can also be in response to a thought. A random thought could trigger further cascading thoughts and emotions.
3: Here’s one article on what drives decision-making.
4: A stalemate would mean that no actions are taken in response to either the mental or the spiritual reflex. Often, this is better than letting the mental reflex dominate.
5: Motivated reasoning and the tendency to find ways to do what one wants and to justify the action is personified by the character of Karna in the story of “Mahabharat”. For more on this, please refer this article.
6: The spiritual reflex would still be a conditioned, learned response and not a spontaneous, instinctive one like the mental reflex. So, a person needs to practice spiritual techniques such as TAME a lot before his spiritual reflexes can start easily countering his mental reflexes.
7: One finds happiness in meditation because this happiness is unconditional and does not depend upon what is happening around him. This similar unconditional happiness starts to dominate the mind when spiritual reflexes become strong.
