Charak Samhita’s Sutra Sthana’s Chapter 8 talks about the Disciplinary Protocol for Sense and Motor Organs. So far, we have seen Dos that we must perform daily. Now, we will begin to understand Don’ts to be avoided in daily life.
These forbidden code of conducts when performed repeatedly, it affects efficiency of our senses. And with faulty sensorial perceptions, we cannot perform our svadharma very well.
Very first advice is :
नानृतं ब्रूयात्
Never speak lies. How does speaking untruth will affect senses?
In order to execute lies, mind has to use the brain, in certain manner. This can rewire brain that we start seeing world with one specific angle and we tend to ignore inputs given by our senses.
As per this modern research[1] Telling small lies desensitises our brains to the associated negative emotions and may encourage us to tell bigger lies in future.
The team scanned volunteers’ brains while they took part in tasks where they could lie for personal gain. They found that the amygdala, a part of the brain associated with emotion, was most active when people first lied for personal gain. The amygdala’s response to lying declined with every lie while the magnitude of the lies escalated. Crucially, the researchers found that larger drops in amygdala activity predicted bigger lies in future.
How Lying Takes Our Brains Down a ‘Slippery Slope’ – Neuroscience News
About amygdala[2] :
- The amygdala in the limbic system plays a key role in how animals assess and respond to environmental threats and challenges by evaluating the emotional importance of sensory information and prompting an appropriate response.
- The main job of the amygdala is to regulate emotions, such as fear and aggression.
- The amygdala is also involved in tying emotional meaning to our memories. reward processing, and decision-making.
- When it is stimulated electrically, animals show aggressive behavior and when it’s removed, they no longer show aggressive behavior.
Multiple brain regions participate in analyzing sensory inputs we receive from our senses and then help us to evaluate logical and\or emotional responses to sensory stimuli. As per above research, amygdala activity is reduced by repeated lies. This will make person’s emotional self weak and their decisions based on sensory inputs will lack the emotional part. In popular culture, such individuals are known as either ruthless, cruel or zombies.
As the amygdala has connections to many other brain structures, this means it can link to areas in order to process ‘higher’ cognitive information with systems which control ‘lower’ functions (such as autonomic responses like breathing, touch, and sensitivity).
This allows the amygdala to organize physiological responses based on the cognitive information available. The most well-known example of this is the fight-or-flight response.
In summary, telling lies, in long term, will reduce our capacity to take right decisions and involve karmedriya(कर्मेन्द्रिय). Faulty fight-or-flight responses means direct threat the existence.
References:
[1] How Lying Takes Our Brains Down a ‘Slippery Slope’ – Neuroscience News
