Exploring the Biological Roots of Cognition - A Conversation with Jinan KB

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

I'm also calling it biological roots of cognition, which means that all of us are naturally endowed to make sense of the world. The content of your cognition is the world, the real world, your context, and it is an autonomous process. You engage with it, you make sense of it. Language doesn't have much role in that.

Hi everyone, and thanks for joining me again for this week's podcast.

My name is Tim Logan, and the podcast is produced by Good Impact Labs. Cognition is a strange word and not one very commonly used by practicing educators. It can feel academic and detached from the act of a group of young people actually learning in the world. But when you look at what the dictionary definition of cognition is, about processing knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses, this seems pretty fundamental to what we do as educators. But what if our understanding of what it means has been heavily biased characterized by the Western modern scientific paradigm. For example, in the difference between learning the world and learning about the world via the linguistic labels and symbols that we create to represent aspects of it. My guest this week, Jinan KB, is offering a radically different description of what natural cognition, or the biological roots of cognition, actually are. I absolutely love these kinds of conversations as they challenge me right at the edge of my understanding, given my own conditioning into particular ways of knowing about the world. It also feels like a really alive part of what we're being asked to do now more broadly in order to think differently about the educational and societal predicaments in which we find ourselves. Jinan is a researcher of natural cognition, cognitive autonomy, and the biological foundations of knowing. His work began with a simple but unsettling question: how do human beings naturally create knowledge? And in 1991, Jinan stopped reading in order to investigate the question directly. For over 4 decades, he has explored this question through lived engagement with children, non-literate artisans, indigenous communities, design education, and everyday life. He's the author of Awakening Beauty: and works with parents, educators, designers, researchers, and communities interested in recovering the conditions that allow human intelligence to flourish naturally.

Well, thank you, Jinen. It is a huge pleasure to have this conversation with you. It was a great honor to be on a recent panel that we did together with Nora Bateson and some others in a Hong Kong event. That was the first time we'd met.

Yes.

And, um, no, I'm just so grateful to be able to follow up with you and to go deeper into some of your fascinating work. So no, thank you very much.

Thank you.

So, I mean, is it perhaps worth just initially giving, I mean, personally I'm very curious, but how, how did you come to this work? I mean, we'll, we'll get into maybe some of the, the work and the concepts and the ideas that you are really strongly and powerfully advocating for. Now, many of which we very much share on this podcast. But yeah, perhaps just, I'm curious, how did you come to enter this kind of work?

So basically, I never liked education at all. Throughout my schooling time, I did not enjoy this at all. But I was, you know, pulling on, getting good marks and all that, no? But meaning, you know, copying and all kinds of things. Parents were teachers, so there's also a compulsion that you should learn, no? So like that, I finally reached engineering and there I felt absolute boredom actually. And I also found that hardly anybody was truly interested in learning, you know, basically see, they were learning for getting good marks and, you know, passing and so that they'll get employment. Nothing to do with knowledge per se, you see. And teachers, they wanted to teach, but not interested in the content. They were, you know, that deep connection. I also happened to read Bruno at that time. Who was burned at stake for stating that the Earth is round. So I saw this contradiction between people who are truly interested in knowledge, they have an absolute commitment, whereas, you know, this millions and millions of people are being dragged into this nonsense called education and creating absolutely mediocre people. This is what is happening actually, mediocre to the core. So I felt this is something that, that is fundamentally wrong with modern spaces. I also realized in 4th year engineering, I decided never to spend work in my life, meaning never do anything that you don't like to do. Even before I passed out, I decided this, you know. And then I got into design education, which is what I found extremely interesting because I found two kinds of spaces. You know, one was I call the teaching environment where the content is there, teacher is there, meeting is there, you know, attendance, all kinds of nonsense, but you hardly find anybody truly learning. Whereas in the design school paradigm, nobody is teaching, you're free to do what you feel like, no attendance taken, no marks, and yet everybody is learning, you know. So I found this contrast very interesting. But I also found that within the design school paradigm also, design schools also, it is a purely a Western format of design education because we learn Western aesthetic sense. History of design is nothing but what Bauhaus did. You know, or what happened in, uh, in the Art and Crafts Movement.

Sure.

So I felt what nonsense is happening, you know. You know, we call this National Institute of Design, which is in India, and we learn about what West did, you know. And so again, I began to confront some issue even at a more deeper level. I realized that this question should be engaged in a more deeper level. It should be more political, you know. And then after that, I started living with non-literate people, illiterate people. So then I realized that from politics we must go into biology. And what is happening in decolonization is we are only looking at the realm of politics. So when you look at politics, then you have a villain from whom you need to decolonize. Whereas I found that the problem is much deeper. When I lived with non-literate people, I realized that, as I keep telling, literate learn the world, illiterate learn the world, which means that We need to look at it more biologically, which means that even the West is damaged. Even though they're imposing their damaged content on the rest, they are far more damaged because of the text. Literacy rewires your brain like anything, you know. And I came to know this because in '91 I stopped reading completely, 100%. I stopped reading, and I found that slowly, slowly, slowly over the years, I found my senses began to rework. You know, many of the habits that literacy had created in your head began to wither away.

Fascinating.

Study very well the damages that literacy actually does to you and how does a non-literate cognition function, you know.

I mean, this is deeply fascinating to me and I would love to— I mean, you've said a lot already and I'd love to dance around some of those things if we can because there's— I mean, I can imagine some listeners are hearing, you know, damage that literacy is doing. I mean, to many people that's a very unusual idea, right? So let's— but just before we that, I just want to set the context a bit more. I mean, when you're talking about going to school and then engineering school and design school, this is in Kerala, is it? In the south of India?

In different places. School was in, uh, in Kerala. My engineering was in Bhopal and design education was in Ahmedabad. So different, different places.

Okay. And what, when was this? In what year was this?

So engineering was from '79 to '84 and design was from '85 to '89. Okay, so design education, I always felt that it was like a rebirth of mine. It was like a womb, a space where I was able to rebirth myself, because I began to ask really deep fundamental questions, you know, without knowing the crisis. That's what is interesting. You see, the most important thing I, that I dealt with in design education was that I felt difficult planning and then doing. Now you, you sit on a table, plan things, you go and execute it. For some reason, I had no idea why, why I, I was so disturbed. I felt, no, something is not right. So I began to reverse the process. I would just go work with materials, from that something will evolve.

Interesting. Yeah.

And actually, luckily, what happened also was that I was very much interested in working with clay. Not clay because of any particular reason, but I wanted to work with hands. That was the reason. So as I began to work with hands, luckily the department head did not want me to come there. So I took clay and I started working on my own. I think that's the best thing that happened because I was saved from the methods and the tools. Because every, you know, educational space you go, they will tell you these are the methods to do and these, these are the tools given to you. I was saved from both. But I always felt that clay was telling me what to do. There's a materiality to clay which tells you, this is how you should mold me, this is what you should do with me. Yeah, it is a fantastic thing because on hindsight I realized that I was actually confronting the most important problem of modernity, which is the fragmentation of the body and mind.

Right, right.

And that was what I— without knowing anything about it, I just dealt with it. And I reclaimed my process orientation because modernity is product orientation. You know, you have knowledge to be learned, whereas process is that you are in the knowing, whereas knowledge is only a byproduct of this.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's what actual natural cognition is all about, actually.

And one of the phrases I loved when I was doing the research for this conversation was you, you used this phrase, we become what we engage with. And I mean, in a way, what I'm hearing you reflecting there in the, in this making and material relating with clay.

Yeah.

And with the world. I mean, it's almost like the world Would you say the world becomes a teacher in this coupling, this relating with the, with what you're engaging with?

Yeah, that's very interesting because see, I had no exposure to cognitive science when I began to talk about this.

Right.

I began to observe that people who go through education, the more you like it, the more you like to teach. So I found that what you actually learn in a school is to teach, not to learn. Don't confuse these two things. Yeah, you love your teacher and you become a teacher. That is not learning, that is, that is learning the teacher. So I say the teacher teaches to teach, so we become teachers. Because you see, one thing is very clear in cognitive science, which is the basis, is that what you experience is what you become. So imagine, right from childhood, you are taken away from the real world, given toys to you, then given a book to you, So two things happen. One, you kill the natural content of your learning because toys are extremely dangerous, more dangerous than schools, because the damage that toys does, nobody has studied. Schooling damages, people have studied. I have a fantastic documentation of what children do spontaneously in the villages, and I found that there is a very, very beautiful grammar pattern in every activity that children do. See, when children sit on a sofa, why do they bounce? Everywhere when children sit on a sofa, they bounce. That means that there is something biological about it. It's not an egoistic thing that is happening. And I found that there are many such activities which children do, which are guided by life, by things around, by affordances of things around.

For sure. You see? Yeah.

And that is what gets killed when toys are given.

So, okay. So this is, I mean, so This, you're going very fast with some of these really fascinating ideas. So I'd love to just dig in, into the soil of some of these ideas, 'cause it's, I mean, this is, is amazing stuff. So you mentioned natural cognition. Maybe that's a way to open up just that a little bit more in terms of what does that mean to people. Yeah.

See, I'm also calling it biological roots of cognition.

Yes, sure.

Which means that, see, all of us are naturally endowed to make sense of the world. And as we engage with the world, we create implicit understanding. Implicit knowledge is what we have, not explicit knowledge. Like, for example, we learned our mother tongue without knowing grammar. And there was nobody teaching also. We just picked it up. You see? So what I call as natural cognition is the content of your cognition is the world, the real world, your context. And it is an autonomous process. You engage with it. You make sense of it. Language doesn't have much role in that. So the materials will tell you what is the materiality, you know, what is happening in the world is what is actually making you understand the world.

Yeah.

Is it? So the world is the content, autonomy is the, is the requirement, cognitive autonomy is the requirement. So there is a natural process of engaging and this is what playfulness is. Again, play has been misunderstood by modernity because they're removing the content, taking only the play. And then making it into a play activity. So unless you connect the content with the way it is explored, you missed it.

Right. So playfulness is a different thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Modernity is misunderstanding that because they don't understand the world as the content. For them, world is the content.

The world is the content.

Yeah.

Real world is the content.

So then, I mean, it's, it's very interesting to me because it's coming up a lot in more modern Western science now with people like Michael Levin investigating these ideas and Katherine Hayles talks about basal cognition, like, which is maybe somewhat similar to what you are talking about with natural cognition. Yeah. So then let's move then into, so what then happens when you learn the word and not, not just the world? What, what are you saying happens to our cognition when we begin to learn literacy?

Okay. So what happens is that, see, our senses function differently when we engage with the world and with the word. For example, I ask you to imagine the Earth. Imagine the Earth. Right? Can you tell me what did you actually see in your mind?

I saw the, I guess, stereotypical kind of image of the blue and the green sphere.

Yes. So which means you saw an image, a photographic image.

Right, exactly.

Right? Otherwise, people normally say they saw a ball because that is what their connection is, the globe that you see, you know, this round football size.

Yeah.

So this is the distortion that the book has already done to you because actually the world that you see is an immense world which is all, you know, around you. That is the world. But the moment the literate engage with the world, they engage with the picture of the world, not the real world.

Interesting. Yes. Except I guess, can I just to clarify on that point? We have been given the images of the world by scientific investigation into the fact that the world is a sphere and is not, as was previously conceived, a flat plane, right?

Yeah.

So yes, I've probably taken on an image of the world, but I'm also, that image is informed by scientific investigation. So how does that connect?

No, no, no, no. The scientific— see, one thing is that science is science only for a scientist. For the rest, it is superstition. The whole modern education is nothing but superstition for 95% of the people. Because we read, we agree, we— you see, I'll tell you one very interesting thing. One day, a child came back from school and he told me this, that today teacher told us that earlier people thought the Earth was round. And now they know it is flat, right? I kept quiet. This is a 7, 8-year-old boy telling me that earlier people thought the Earth was round, now they know it is flat. He reversed this because in his actual experience of the world, he can see flatness. Understand?

Yes.

So I think that was a boy who was not believing in science. Okay, maybe that if, if you're truly interested then it is— you have to explore and understand it.

But, but not necessarily for ourselves, surely.

I mean, no, what I'm telling is that, you know, you see, one major mistake that the modern education does is that we think that everybody should know everything, and actually nobody knows anything. Actually, this is what has happened. Finally, we are believers of information which is called as science. So the science is something that you should be— first of all, you must retain your natural original mind, which is a scientific mind. Science is not established by the West, please understand this. Sure. Anybody who is inquiring is a scientific mind. It's an inquiry mind that is scientific mind, you know. And in a watered-down manner, all children are scientists till they get into modern educational paradigm, because then they are taken away from exploration, trial, and, you know, all kinds of things. And then they are given certainties. This is science, this is social studies, you know. And so, see, I think we have to deeply look at in a very fundamental level because the damage has been so profound, you know, that we need to— so what I did was that I began to ask fundamental questions once again. Everything that is taken for granted, I began to question. What is science? What is grammar? How do you learn? You know, what is culture, for example? What is beauty?

Yeah, I mean, these are beautiful questions. Just if I can, there's something niggling at me, which is something like part of what, for example, the, the example of the Earth that you just described. Yeah. I am aware that there are humans on this planet who have experienced the sensory inputs of seeing the Earth.

Yeah.

In its, in its spherical nature. And based on their experience, there is a degree of trust that I have in that, that experience was a true experience that they had. And I am going to accept that that is, was, so we're somehow we're connecting with the experience of others in our kind of construction of our own realities, right? Surely that's part of what we do as humans, wiring our minds together with others.

But I think there has to be an age for that. You cannot keep doing this to a 7-year-old child.

I see. I see.

Understand, ma'am?

Okay.

If you are interested in knowing, see, for example, so it's not, so first of all, first understanding of world, earth is round, doesn't come from direct perception, but from inference.

Ah, sorry. I see what you mean.

There's an initial idea about the, you know.

Right. 100%. Agreed.

Yeah, yeah. And there were people who were inquirers. They wanted to understand what is happening. So they began to study stars, moon, sun, the movements. Then they realized, oh, there is something about the Earth which is moving, which is, you know. So I'm telling that everybody need not bother their head with this. No, they have other things to do. If you are a good farmer, be a good farmer. But farmer also understands certain aspects of the world. Sure. Seasons. You know, some, they won't understand that, na. Today what is happening is that existential knowledge has been completely wiped out from modern, from humans and given this information which is hardly of any use to us.

I see. Yeah, agreed. I very much agree with that. Absolutely. Yeah. So then just to go back to the literacy part, the idea of, so if, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm understanding you saying is that as we teach young people specific words as symbols for pieces of reality, we are fragmenting their reality and we are taking away their own direct, or, or the opportunity for their own direct perception and kind of experiential existential learning of being in the world. Is that— would that—

yeah, yeah, yes. So the thing is that, as I was telling earlier, Senses function in different ways when you're engaging with the world and the word, right? So what happens when you get into literacy is that your mind takes over the functioning of the senses. So when you read, you imagine, and then you create the story in the head. I'll tell you another interesting thing. Imagine traveling. So you are familiar with India?

Very little. I've been once.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just imagine if you know where is Delhi, And where is Kerala? So I keep telling this, you know, imagine traveling from Delhi to Cochin or Bangalore and travel back from Bangalore to Delhi. So I, I ask people who, who, you know, educated people, when you imagine traveling from Delhi to Cochin or Cochin to Delhi, did you travel up and down? Vertical trip did you take? Actually, I have many such interesting explorations to tell that what happens to an educated mind.

Exactly.

You see, very clear example.

Yeah, exactly. One of the other ones I liked in one of your videos was where you present a scene and then you put a word, a label on the scene. And when you see the difference, when you experience the difference of the way you interact with that, with that scene.

Absolutely. Yeah.

When there's a word there and when there isn't was, that was quite interesting to me to notice that difference.

Yeah, yeah. So I've actually— see, the thing was that, you know, when I wanted to communicate— see, the problem with the literate mind is that they're very good in— see, first of all, they're dealing with certainty. So their habits of the mind is to conclude, because they're dealt with concluded information right through their formative years to 18 years. They're concluded information that they're doing. This concluded information forces their brain to always seek for closure. And this closure is done by reasoning. So reasoning is not a natural cognitive tool at all. Reasoning is there only because dealing with ready-made information.

Or I would say, just, I would clarify, when you say reasoning in that sense, you mean that particular, a kind of logical deductive reasoning of that kind of modern rational—

Modern reasoning. I'm talking about modern reasoning. Yeah, see, there are two types of reasonings. One is that Reasoning is an inherent process where your ego doesn't have to come in because it is through inherent process of reasoning, self-organization happens. That is not your ego doing it. Whereas modernity forces you to use ego and bring out that quality called reasoning, and then you reason and conclude. So it is only with the, you know, concluded matter you can use reasoning.

Yeah. Just on that point that it feels very interesting to me because then when you experience a misunderstanding with someone else, when you're both using the same word, but you then realise you actually mean very different things.

Absolutely.

There is a really interesting experience there of a lack of certainty and the fact that the concluded information that you're both using are actually wildly different.

Absolutely.

So it's like, so it's almost like it's a myth of certainty or something. It's like a, it's a fragmented myth of certainty with these little boxes called words that we create, but actually they don't necessarily correspond to the same reality in terms of understanding for each of us.

Yeah. So what has happened is that modernity has appropriated all the words and given their meaning to that. So taken away the real meaning of all this. Real, for example, I talk about creativity as a natural tendency in humans because see, creativity, My definition is that responding to the unknown is creativity. Mm-hmm. Responding to the unknown.

Beautiful.

Love that. And that is what all literature people are doing. That's what all children are doing. They're responding to the unknown all the time. They're being creative. So creativity is the life-giving ability to understand the world because you're always dealing with unknown. You're making sense of the known, you know, continuously. But it is taken away. It is removed in your school paradigm. When you create, Special creative people. Yeah, that's what I say, you know, and they celebrated as something special. In fact, that is absolutely normal thing. So capitalism also accelerated many of this. So it's not just literates. Capitalism actually compounded all these things into a completely distorted manner, you know.

Absolutely. I mean, by definition, in a way, whether normative or not, like whether you, whether you judge that to be positive or negative or neutral, but almost by definition, because you're, as you said, that product orientation, capitalism struggles to deal with the process orientation, right? Because it needs things to put values on and to move around and to buy, to sell, to transact. Yeah.

Yeah. So I would say that industrialization is a product of literacy. It's not the other way around. Interesting. Because you see, the first product we ever created was knowledge. So initially it was orally constructed. Suddenly it is brought in, so you believe, you know. And then of course it is printed, it became more permanent, and it became, you know, it was sent to throughout the world.

Yeah.

Whereas see, the oral idea of knowledge is local always.

Absolutely.

And second thing I found with the non-literate people is that when an information is given to them, oral information, they don't immediately believe it. They wait for experience to happen and then They would say, yeah, maybe possible.

Interesting. So they almost hold it a little bit more lightly and then trust more of their own experience to validate it somehow.

Absolutely. For example, there is this thing that when the bird nests on a tree, based on that, they know when it will rain. Right. No, the bird doesn't know this theory. So the bird will nest as per different timings. So the farmer waits, watches, and then sees that the bird has nested. Maybe in the half tree. So location and timing is what they look at.

Mm-hmm.

I'm telling one example. So because in traditional oral knowledge system, this thing is always there, that the seasons change, the, the way things happen, that is what gives them the guidance to what to do. So which means they have to be observant all the time. There is no ready-made knowledge. So this idea that they have to depend on word is given. But it is not a static thing that on this date and this thing, this will happen. No, every year it could change.

Right, exactly. But that's so interesting to me because that then situates the knowing.

Absolutely.

In a very deep way in that place. And that's when you get—

Absolutely.

You know, as I'm very interested in that kind of the connection with place and with the land of knowing that you see in many indigenous cultures, right? And that's some— Yeah. I think that feels to be a really important thing that I'm learning.

Yeah.

That I, that I, it's, it's quite a difficult idea for me to, to understand. So for example, as I'm engaging with some indigenous speakers and, and knowledge holders in these podcast conversations, it's quite interesting as a format because we are in discussion disembedded from a place in a way because we are meeting here on, in a virtual space.

But no, literacy, literacy is again doing that.

So can you just define what you mean by literacy? Because you've talked about oral language, but are you talking about written literacy specifically?

No, I want to clarify this. So actually, I have redefined what is indigeneity. Indigeneity is actually a cognitive realm in which senses are the primary cognitive input. So you have a cognitive foundation of the senses. So just because you are from that place, you can't claim to be an indigenous person. Right. Indigeneity is dictated by the cognitive system that you are using. So if you are sensorially connected to the world, that is what actually indigeneity should be. Because the educated indigenous people are not indigenous. They are actually playing to the tune of the Western formats. That's what is happening. So the indigenous leaders, most educated PhD people, have been co-opted into a Western system. So they are, they are romantic stories on Indigeneity is happening. Actual indigeneity is actually sensory, sensorial connection with the world.

But when you say world there, you mean specific place. But yes, but a specific place, right? I mean, because—

Absolutely. What I mean by world is that only, the context.

Yeah.

It's actually contextual, whichever place you are in. I'm generally using the word world. That doesn't mean the whole world.

No, no, but I just, I think that's important to clarify.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

So then with the increase in the, as you say, accentuated by then beginning to write down, so the shift from oral to written language, that increasing certainty, fixedness, separation, fragmentation, collapse.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see, because your body has no use after that, meaning your senses and your body is not in connection with the world. You're reading and making up stories in the head. So only your mind is getting used and you are using language as your cognitive source. What is written down is your cognitive source. So it's a description of something.

Yeah. But, but can I clarify, because that's quite a categorical statement. I, I wonder if, like, those things don't go away when you become literate. So, so there's other, that other sensorial landscape that I have, emotional, other, all sorts of sensorial landscape that I am I have, I'm, I have now as we're talking and I have literacy. And so how do you see the relationship between those? Do you, do you see that the literacy actually erases a lot of that sense of—

Absolutely.

You see, we must again and again look at the childhood as a space for formation of, I call it formation of beingness and an integral beingness in your formation. Your emotion is not separate from cognition. Your sense of beauty is not separate. So your value, beauty, and knowledge are integral being.

Beautiful. Yeah, yeah, love that.

But what happens in modernity is that they have separated everything and they're only talking about knowledge. And then at a later day, they, they realize that something is wrong with their emotion, so they will put in value education. And then they will see something is wrong with art, so art education is added. In fact, that holistic experience means You're grounded in value. First of all, your grounding is in value, value system of, I would say, sustaining life. That is the value system given by life to you. Nothing else. That's a fundamental value system given to all living beings is sustain life. Simple rule that life gives to everyone.

Yeah.

And the context will tell you what you need to do. Context will tell you what needs to do. And how is dictated by, again, the rule of nature. Which is that no unwanted spending of energy. Optimization of energy is the basic root of beauty. It is not for creation, it's not for creativity, it's not of the artistic statement. Beauty is given by life. It is to live in the most appropriate manner, harmonious manner. Beautiful, you know. So I have done very interesting documentation on this.

Again, yeah, this is, this is beautiful. Have you ever heard of the free energy principle? Carl Friston?

Not really.

Okay. So it's so interesting what you've just described in the last couple of minutes feels to me like a really interesting alternative description of what Carl Friston is, is talking about in The Free Energy Principle. Obviously that's like bound up in symbolic mathematical language and science and all of the, all of that stuff.

Yeah.

Or maybe to say it the other way, what Carl Friston and The Free Energy Principle is trying to do is describe what you've just beautifully described about being in the world, right? It just feels like there's a resonance between that. And I say that maybe to recognize that modern Western science is also trying to find its way, one could say, back to some of the same insights, right?

Definitely, definitely. Because you see, many people in the West have tried to deal with the West, but somehow they have been appropriated all the time. And somebody, some people are being even neglected completely. I think Goethe was someone who tried to do, look at things in a different way, but he was hardly anybody talks about Goethe or Ivan Illich, for example. So many such people who have tried to raise fundamental issues.

No, agreed. Yeah. Whitehead, Alfred North Whitehead.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not very familiar, but I know many such, because, you know, this is quite, you know, evident, you know, phenomenology, for example. Now I keep looking at phenomenology. Yeah. But I also see how modernity appropriates it. And again and again, turn it into a tool of the mind.

Mm.

You see? So today, I feel phenomenology is no longer phenomenology. Now you are depending on Heidegger and then talking about phenomenology. No, you have to— see, there is a very interesting Zen statement. If you see Buddha on the way, kill him. If you see Buddha on the way, kill him. I would say, if you see Heidegger on the way, kill him. Phenomenology used to be a very, you know, See, this has to be authentic experience of you, not what Heidegger said, you know. I don't know why people don't understand this.

Yeah.

See, when I have been exploring many of these things and I found that what I said and what Montessori said the same, what I said and what Heidegger— so I find connection with so many people in the West who have been doing fantastic work, but I have not read any of them. Only recently I began to look at, you know, who are the people who have been having a similar thing. So I feel that, you know, you see, when you explore authentically, you are bound to come to know what is your topic of exploration, you know.

Yeah.

We don't have to keep reading more and more people and, you know, short-circuiting your own understanding.

But that's fascinating to me because I think exactly with your line of argument, it feels like that's part of what school does to us, is alienates us from ourselves and our own subjective experience, even the idea of calling it subjective experience, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I have redefined subjective and objective in this manner.

Yeah, okay, open that up then. What's that?

So objective, see, without the subject, there is no knowledge. That's absolutely, it has to be very clear. It is through subjective exploration that you will even know what is happening there. But if you don't have any egoistic need to understand, because, you know, if I want to understand for a job, if I want to understand for something else, so if there is no such, you know, need, your knowledge is just for no reason at all. Then that becomes objective. Because you don't have any personal grind, personal business. You don't have any selfish need connected with this knowledge, you know. It's just observation of what is life.

It's just like noticing or being in and experiencing with what's happening.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

And you see, if you look at the problem with the Western science is that it is often for controlling nature, the whole—

Of course.

So which means that, you know, you're already having an idea in the head, whereas the Indian knowledge system or the non-Western knowledge system were not to control, but just to know and be with it, don't go against it. Whereas if you look at the Western philosophy, they are against nature, want to control. Now again, I want to clarify one thing very clearly. This is only the literate West. So when I say West, it is not the illiterate West. I'm very sure that the illiterate West also thought exactly like every other indigenous societies. Where it is sensorially connected to the world, you are guided by life. You are not guided by mind. When you are guided by life, because life will guide you to do the right thing. Whereas ego, no. Ego is always selfish, you know. It has to be me. So it will devise things in a very different way.

But just to ask, I mean, this is purely my ignorance, but ego is not a product, you're not claiming that ego is a product of this separation and this modernity?

There are two things that literacy has done. See, understanding is something that actually happens to you. It's not something that you do egoistically. For example, our mother tongue. We picked up our mother tongue with no effort. And most people in the artisanal or in the rural tribal area, they are in knowing. So they don't have an idea that I'm holding on to knowledge. Understand? So they're continuously doing. So there is a It is not done egoistically. Through action, you come to know, being part of the process. Whereas the moment you use reason, conscious reason, then your ego is what is functioning. I am reasoning and doing this. So reasoning is the basic activity that I— that is my understanding. Please don't believe in what I say, but my understanding goes that two things. One, time. Modern time is a result of separation. This, this again the same thing. See, otherwise when you look at something, yeah, I'm showing you this.

Yeah, yeah, a cup.

One thing you say, you don't have to use reason to conclude, you just saw it. Whereas in the modern knowledge system, you have to use reason to understand. So for example, I'll tell you one very interesting thing. I was actually doing some work in ChatGPT, writing something. So I had written learning the world. Learning the world. So ChatGPT corrected me, telling it is— this is grammatically wrong. It has to be learning from the world or about the world.

Yeah, right.

So then I, then I checked again with ChatGPT. Now look at it biologically, what should be the right way to put it? Then ChatGPT told it is learning the way, because in biological processes it is not about something that you do. You learn everything. It's because language is inserted in between, you have to learn about something. So in modern parlance, that has become the norm.

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And it's almost like that's a metaphor for the separation that happens between us and the world.

That is the time, both things are happening. One, it is a time, you created a time gap between knowing and knowing, that's one. Secondly, you have to use reason to do that.

Yes.

So then the ego comes into play.

So can I ask you then about what you think about metacognition? Because from what I've been exploring and I don't know, understanding or not.

Yeah.

There is something quite significant in the recursive metacognitive ability of a human brain and body and, you know, ecosystem that allows for some of that reflection on experience. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that feels to me, you know, from my own ignorant position, but that, that feels to me really quite significant about what it means to be a human in the world. It's one of our, I don't know, you could say it's one of our superpowers, right? Or maybe not. Maybe, I don't know. What do you think about metacognition?

Yeah. So what I feel is that the whole living beings are in implicit knowledge of the world, depending upon each species, you know, and context. Suppose I'm living near the sea and I'm engaging with that. I have implicit knowledge, which I need not, I, because see, for example, without knowing grammar, we are able to speak very well. Right? So the grammar can be explicated through this act of metacognition. But for me, metacognition is also sensorial. It is not afterwards. While I am speaking to you, I am becoming aware of it. So the Western definition is thinking about thinking, metacognition.

Exactly. Yeah.

No, I would say metacognition is being aware of what you're doing right now. So you have two levels of awareness. So as we are speaking, I would pay attention to what you're telling. I also would pay attention to how you're telling this, or why you are telling this. So when my question is how you're telling, then I would pay attention to the structure of the language, structure of the words. So I'll tell you what is interesting. You know, see, my brother's son did not go to school at all till 12 years, and then he went to school. And when he gave all exams, and he found that he got very good marks in physics, mathematics, and chemistry, and not other subjects. So what was very clear was that because he lived in the farm doing all kinds of things on his own, he had implicitly understood all the rules that are being told to him in physics, you know, mathematics, and all that. Because he was not creating an image in the head, he was actually giving names to his own experiences. Yeah, understand, na? So that actually, a scientist, probably a good scientist is somebody who metacognize on experiences. A good psychologist, all sciences I feel could be looked at it like that, you know. If I'm more interested in, I pay attention to why you are telling, the question of why, the more and more I pay attention to the why, that could be the way one can decode psychology. I don't know, I'm just, you know, trying to look at It's interesting, isn't it?

Because that example of the science, and then you're almost being then provided with a language to label aspects of your own lived experience. And so, yeah, I guess one of the questions I have is, does that labeling destroy the experience or does it allow for, or, or potentially also both allow for a deepening of the experience because you've somehow recognized there's something about, I mean, literally recognize, right? Like you are recognizing an experience you have had through a new lens, which is the label of that thing. And then you're somehow going deeper into the experience of that thing for a second time. I don't know. How, how does that, how do you feel about that?

So I talk about two types of languages. One is experiential language and the other one is mental language. So literates have mental language because there is no reference, there is no experience of the references.

Yeah.

Whereas indigenous societies, language is connected with their experience. So I give you a very good example of this. See, in modernity, when we speak about food, we talk about proteins, you know, carbohydrates, vitamins, and all that. Whereas an indigenous person, would say you eat more mango, less of rice, you know, more of chapati. Immediately the sensorial connection is established with experience. Whereas the moment you say, you know, protein and all that, the mind doesn't work. Mind has to work and figure out what is protein.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So when you talk about, you know, even I, when I hear all these talks given about the brain, no, all terminology is given for— this is all mental gymnastics that is happening.

100%.

Yeah. So there is definitely, there is an experiential language which is rooted to your context again, whereas the other one is mental language. So mental language, you can see, I keep asking people, what exactly is abstraction?

Good question.

People don't understand that abstraction is actually a process contained within the natural cognition. You don't have to abstract. Abstraction, like digestion, is an internal process. Through abstraction, you understand the general by experiencing the particular.

Beautiful. Yeah.

And that's a very natural thing.

Yeah. Right.

You know, whereas we are not dealing with abstracted knowledge. This is a common misunderstanding people have. I call it either absent knowledge. I mean, it's actually dealing with information. We're not dealing with knowledge at all. This is my feeling of this, you know.

So yeah, the idea of abstracted knowledge to me would be something which has, which, which has become a concept separate from the experience of that particular or general. Yeah. So there's something about generalizing from the particular, but there's also this other thing of taking it, pulling it away from materiality and into a realm of ideas, a conceptual realm. That to me is abstracting.

No, but that also happens within the societies. No. So there is a, see, I have looked at what I call as cognitive foundation. There's something that I am— I don't not come across anybody attempting to understand this cognitive foundation. The first layer of your cognition is sensory inputs, right? Sensory inputs. As the sensory inputs are also, then little bit of imagination happens. There is inference happening, language coming in with the names referencing, you know, slowly, slowly, slowly. So the ground layer is sensory with no name, no So there's a concrete layer of all the sensory experiences that you have had. Then naturally, imagination will take place because if I— when I show— this is a sensory experience, when I take it away, still it is there. So that image is still in the head, is it? So I feel imagination is the ability of the mind to imagine what is absent. It's imagining. Yeah, that's the beginning of that, the root from where it begins.

No.

You experience concrete. In absence of that, you imagine that, right? And then inference is part of that. Then slowly, slowly after that, you get into abstraction. From abstracted ideas, you go into concept. So there is a very clear, uh, system in the natural cognition that arrives at the concept, but from concrete. So there is a clear connection that you can make with the concrete. Where did it begin? No.

Yeah, fascinating. And I've, I've heard you critique this kind of embodiment turn, right? Because there's, there is clearly, I mean, I've been featuring it a lot on the podcast. There are lots of scholars and practitioners and all sorts of people now, particularly in the West, who are saying, let's bring the body back in. I mean, there's some people that have been saying that all the way along. Yeah. But it's definitely a, a hangover from the Cartesian mind-body split. And then a recognition that maybe we need to bring the body back in. I can hear some of the same resonances with some of the things you're talking about, about this sensory layer as a foundation.

Yeah.

That is also being gestured towards in that embodiment conversation. But what, yeah, how do you relate to the kind of new embodiment conversations happening?

No, so also what I feel is there is a very interesting saying by Milarepa, Buddhist Tibetan monk Milarepa. He says that Spirituality is the last ploy of the mind, a trick of the mind. So embodiment is the final ploy of the mind, modern embodiment. Because see, I have actually, I've tried to look at what is happening in the cognitive science, history of modern cognitive science, starting from the time when they decided machine should be intelligent. That's the beginning actually.

Yeah.

And the cognitive science, birth of cognitive science is in engineering departments and not in, you know, biology department. That's a very, another very important thing to look at.

Absolutely.

So the intelligence was a need for making machine intelligent and not to understand human intelligence. So the whole modern cognitive science, that is absolutely biased and wrong, I would say, because the whole focus has been to make machines more and more intelligent. So it is only in this process they realize that body is important.

Yeah.

Because they wanted a container for the intelligence to be placed. So Robotic exploration is what made the body evident again. So there was also phenomenology happening on the side. But if you look at the, how the cognitive scientists are bringing back embodiment is in this paradigm, and the body is brought in. You can see now body has become a product again. Everybody is offering embodiment workshops. That absolute nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Some dancer is called because then he's an embodiment. You are absolute nonsense, you know.

Love it. So just say, say a bit more about why you think that's nonsense.

No, see, what is happening in the context of modernity, it is picking and choosing what it wants to make it into a product. So they will actually— reasoning is a best example of how it picked up reasoning as a separated ability which is given to people, you know, to use it. So critical thinking, all these are Things that are picked away as a product and sold. So embodiment is just, see, if you also look at the whole, you know, discovery related to body, for example, 4 recognitions that they say, you know. Yeah. You know, I don't remember what are all the 4, you know, different, different things. What is interesting is that different people in different places are finding out, you know. Somebody is telling material is important. Somebody is telling this is important. Emotion, you know. And I would say that mind is constructing again and again these stories, right? It is not body's recognition. That's why I said, you know, when I stopped in my engineering, design education, when I actually dealt with it by not engaging the mind's dominance, I began to work with hands and body became to dictate. And then from that, mind came. So mind is very important, but mind only as a servant of the body. Not the other way around. I'm talking to physical mind, mind which should have evolved from body's experience of the world. So your whole childhood, you have denied the body. And now the mind, when you're grown up, your mind is telling now the body is important. You're only bringing back mind's idea of the body.

Agreed. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think I love that because I mean, that's been something I've been interested in as well, especially with this podcast is the 4E cognitive science movement. And to your point about the origins of cognitive science, I was reading again Howard Gardner's book and, you know, he's very explicit in talking about the origins, the history of cognitive science, the history of the cognitive sciences, I think. And he very explicitly in the first chapter there says that the best metaphor for the human mind is the computer. So he's not even being subtle about, or he's not even trying to sneak it in, right? It is, it is there. Plain as day that there is a clear mechanistic metaphorical, but not really metaphorical connection in the way that we understand cognition. Yeah. As a very highly mechanistic thing. And, and so that's why I'm so interested in all of this work that you're talking about, because I think there is a real need for a more, a much deeper rooted biological description of a lot of these things, which you are so powerfully explaining. And I would say there are a lot of people searching, like myself, I would include myself in that, searching for a way out of this mind trap, right? And, and we keep getting ourselves stuck on the next mind trap, but, but, but it is a, it is a search from where, so, so the embodiment work, for example, I would say is a searching, is an inquiry into a lot of what you've been describing from a fragmented Western cultural education, history, et cetera. It's a fascinating kind of sociological issue for me because there are people, again, including myself in that, who are deeply stuck in a particular fragmented paradigm. And they're saying, this is, there's something wrong with this, but I'm not quite sure what it is. Maybe I'll try some embodiment workshops. Maybe that will help. Or maybe I'll try mindfulness. Maybe that will help. And it's really interesting, right? As a genuine, genuine exploration that people are making.

A genuineness there, but one is not able to break the paradigm that is trapping you again and again.

Exactly. Exactly. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I did some practices. One, of course, I stopped reading, which may be very difficult for people. Second thing is that I don't conclude with reasoning. That's one thing I very clearly did. And I don't put an effort to understand. Understanding is something that should happen to you. It may not happen now. See, the problem with the educated people is that they want to understand right now because that is the way brain has been conditioned.

So it's true.

I left it open. I realized that understanding is something that should happen to you. Don't worry about concluding. You keep observing life and slowly life will keep on teaching you And you know, this will go on happening actually, you know.

Yeah.

So these are some very interesting practices I, I did. Then I began to see properly, you know, and seeing gave me understanding. So I did not purposely create whatever I'm talking about, was not created by mind in a constructive manner. As I began to explore, slowly, slowly, slowly, things began to emerge and I understanding began to take place, you know.

Yeah. No, I mean, it's just beautiful the way you say it and Can I ask you a question that I wasn't planning on asking you, but do you know Jiddu Krishnamurti?

Yes, of course.

Okay, so I was, I was very interested in Krishnamurti's work when I was young and read a lot. And one of the things that I found very interesting was his, in his dialogues with David Bohm and these, this idea of the unconditioned mind.

Yeah.

And that always really troubled me because reality is quite messy, right? Reality is just quite messy. We are where we are. We're in our— we're trying to do our best in a— well, you know, yeah, to be generous, we're trying to do our best in, in messy circumstances, right?

Absolutely.

And so this idea of this pure idea of an unconditioned mind always felt like an unhelpful myth, like a utopia, right, that we were trying to get towards. Like, we should all be trying to get towards that unconditioned mind. And I always felt I don't know, I felt uneasy with that idea. Like, to me, it felt like that's actually not possible to get there because it's a constant making. Like, we're constantly in process every day. So I don't know, like, how do you, how do you connect with that idea of the unconditioned mind?

No, it's to me, I think that requires far more commitment. What Krishnamurti said, need more commitment. And it's very clear that my inquiry is largely in the realm of academics and modern knowledge.

Okay, sure.

Whereas Samudra is far more deeply into far more deeper issue of what is human. So I think for him, it would have been very easy because that was his commitment to life. Whereas for me, mine was more to do with the crisis of modern education, how others create literacy. So, but I also talking about deconditioning because I realized that it's a biology that should be primary and not the mind. When I say biology, that sensory experience is the ground for knowledge. So unless we resituate ourselves sensorially into the world, we are constantly making stories around— see, till '91 I had read books, but one thing I decided was that I will never say anything that doesn't arise from me. So I don't quote anybody at all, no quotation at all. And I also don't agree with anyone, disagree with anyone. I can hear anybody, but I won't agree nor disagree. You know, so I take a neutral stand and, you know, and because understanding if that happens, it'll happen.

Yeah. It feels incredibly radical, right? Incredibly radical in all senses of that word, because there's something about standing in the place that you are standing and experiencing the world from that position. Like I was having a recent conversation, not for the podcast, but privately with some people who are, you know, knowledgeable about Jainism.

Yeah.

And that was, that was very interesting to me because we were talking about this, these ideas of, again, it's not, it's like in my limited explanation, it would be like relative truth, my relative position, my position in relation to the world.

Yeah.

And the Western mind really struggles with that idea because it, to your point about objectivity and subjectivity, it's like if it's subjective, it's therefore relative and it's therefore a lesser truth than the objective truth that is a generalizable for all time, for all place. And there's something in what I hear you describing that is deeply radical about taking so seriously the place from which people are speaking and experiencing.

Yeah, absolutely.

Beautiful. All right. Thank you so much. I mean, this is just stunning. The only thing I feel like we glossed over a bit, which may have triggered some listeners, is about toys. But maybe we can come back to that in the future.

Childhood.

Yeah.

Later time we can do that, you know.

Another time, another time, because the idea that toys are dangerous for children.

You know, see, I'll just tell you one simple thing.

Okay.

Every object is a potential toy for a child, every object. But there is no term toy for the child. Every object is a potential for exploration.

I see.

So the word for a child, we impose the word toy. We impose the word play because their way of exploring is playful. So playful exploration of the world, we construct two terms, play and toy, and completely kill it. Any object is a potential toy for a child. Any object.

Love that. Jinen, this is just so, so interesting. I just so appreciate your time and so appreciate being able to be in this dialogue with you because it just, it feels really important, really significant, and part of my own personal exploration, but also I think part of what a lot of, a lot of fragmented minds that are trying to search for something, you know, continue their inquiry. So no, thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

So much love. Thank you so much, Jina.

We hope you've enjoyed this episode. Please feel free to continue the dialogues with our guests, with us at Good Impact Labs, on our blog, or on social media, or within your own networks.