Bigotry: Sense Perception and Contemplative Cognition

We begin our existence with some capacity for sense perception. Our senses see you and me as two. Thus, duality is our natural default state. We are not able to see the subtle truths veiled from our senses. Our worldview is contained by what we can perceive, and it takes time to fully develop our ability to cognize what our senses cannot perceive.

When we are able to articulate, we start saying, “Daddy, you don’t know anything,” because we cannot perceive what he can. We cannot relate to his cognition. We cannot see beyond the duality of “me” and “you.” This sense of “me” and “you” soon develops into a sense of “me” against “you,” which easily morphs into life-destroying “us” against “them” conflicts.

Sense perception leads to our identity apart from the identities of others. Comparisons and judgements are natural outgrowths of these individual identities. I have to be loftier than you. The assertion of my loftiness is what is known as supremacy. If I am a Green, it becomes Green supremacy; if I am a Red, it will be the supremacy of the Red. Some people assert their supremacy with aggression and violence; others assert theirs subtly and gently. Some kill in one burst; others do so non-violently, slowly and gently. This does not really make the latter any better than the former, or the victims any better than the perpetrators. A victim of Green supremacy in one place, time or environment is a perpetrator of Red supremacy in another place, time or environment. We are talking here about universal aspects of the human condition in which we are all one.

Aggressive assertion of supremacy provokes a phobic reaction, which may manifest itself when conditions are conducive. Green supremacy today is likely to elicit a reaction called Greenophobia when conditions shift to favour the Red. The Red will then start spreading Greenophobia and aggressively asserting the supremacy of their own.

Aggressive supremacy of the one and phobia of the other is the stuff of many news items today. They are in plain sight, especially for the victims. However, “nonviolent” ways of asserting supremacy, being subtle, are largely absent from news coverage and veiled even from the victims.

Various terms are used for gentle ways of asserting supremacy: discrimination, judgement, partiality, favouritism, prejudice, bias, preconception, predisposition, bigotry. Expressions of bigotry take different forms depending upon their basis, which may be race, colour, ethnicity, creed, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression, caste, class, identity, region, nation or a multitude of others.

Racism is bigotry based upon race. It is a psychosocial stressor (Jacobs 2017). Other forms of bigotry cause stress as well. Stress is a killer; the response it generates is strongly linked to mortality. Acts of hate and bigotry put countless people at risk of being physically and mentally harmed as a result of stress. Each instance of discrimination, irrespective of its basis, results in stress response in the mind-body of the person who is discriminated against.

Our body responds to stress in many ways, including increased secretion of cortisol (Adam, et al. 2015), blood pressure (Brondolo E 2008) and heart rate. People who are exposed to racism experience a marked increase in blood pressure. Blood pressure generally declines during sleep at night, but it does not in those who experience racism. The result is that people who experience racism have a higher mortality rate (Ohkubo T1 1997). Over time, high blood pressure hardens the arteries, increasing potentially fatal risks to the heart and brain.

Stress also induces responses in the mind. It leads to increased mental activity, involving memory exchanges between the conscious and the subconscious on one side and between the subconscious and the unconscious on the other. Increased activity of the mind may make us prone to mental disorders that can affect our relationships, behaviour and learning, and take the form of worry, anxiety, depression, anger, attention deficit, lack of focus, lack of clarity, lack of happiness and lack of belonging to family, community and country.

According to a 1999 study done in the United States, “With all of these effects, it is no wonder that more than 100,000 black people die prematurely each year” (R. S. Levine 2001). Those who experience other forms of bigotry, or in another country, cannot be expected to fare any better.

According to research published in 2001 (Fang CY 2001), we don’t have to experience racism directly for it to affect our health; it can do so even if we are exposed to it through the news. When we view news coverage of racism, our blood pressure increases and stays elevated long after the coverage is over.

It must be remembered that stress is the result of sense perception. The ravages of stress are no different whether the stressor is real or perceived. If we think in terms of duality, it somehow shows. When our thoughts of duality are perceived, we cause stress in the mind of the perceiver. Therefore, education to cultivate feelings of unity in diversity is critical in ushering in an era that will be devoid of the psychosocial stress that duality creates. This stress is an unrelenting killer, killing victim and perpetrator alike.

Why does dualistic perception lead to incessant “us”-against- “them” conflicts and supremacist, phobic and bigoted behaviours? The underlying reason is our proclivity for survival. We see ourselves in physical terms; we identify our survival with that of the body. The body is finite and temporal. Temporality leads to fear of death and finitude to a feeling of helplessness when things do not go our way.

Our body likes and wants certain things. When we have them we are afraid to lose them. We dislike and don’t want certain other things. We are afraid to have them. When we perceive a gap between our reality on the ground and our wants and desires, we feel unfulfilled and that stresses us. This personal stress begets the social stress of dual perception.

If you want to put an end to stress once and for all, then you need to put an end to the perception of duality. We can put an end to the perception of duality only when we develop an extrasensory perception of that indivisible all-pervading reality which manifests not only as our body and mind but also as the body and mind of everyone else. It is that which connects us. We non dually become one when we can cognize our spiritual connection. There is no stress when there is no “other.”

If we live in accordance with the truth of oneness underlying our existence, there is no other. If we see none other, there is no scope of discrimination and there is no stress. If there is no stress, there is no stress-related mental or physical disease. 

There are many stress-related diseases. We can prevent them all by living free of bigotry and discrimination treating each other like members of one family. If we don’t, both conscious and unconscious bigotry kills both the bigot and those against whom the bigotry is directed through degenerative stress related disorders.

The truth underlying the existence of anything is never located right on the surface for all to see. It is always hidden from common view. For that reason, there is a need to seek it contemplatively. If we sit calmly down and attend to this seeking, we will develop an insight that the unseen truth of all existence is one. What “that is” may not be understood but whatever “that is” cannot be two or many. It is its insight which makes us live like one planetary family; hearing about it or book learning is not good enough for living by it until we make it our own insight with deep contemplation.

Lacking personal insight, even if we fully want to be brotherly or sisterly, we unconsciously carry implicit bias which becomes explicit in the face of our own survival, sustenance, reproduction and ego identity inbuilt into our genes.

Lacking personal insight, even if we fully want to be brotherly or sisterly, we unconsciously carry implicit bias which becomes explicit in the face of our own survival, sustenance, reproduction and ego identity inbuilt into our genes. Our natural genetic programming never fails to express itself as explicit bias. The expression of implicit bias is instantaneous, unconscious, and automatic because of the instantaneity of inbuilt survival tendencies. It is so fast that our conscious mind does not have a chance to stop it.

Nature has also provided an escape hatch. Ordinarily we breathe unconsciously. We can override our unconscious breathing with our conscious mind. Regular practice of conscious breathing slows the instantaneity of our unconscious survival tendencies giving our conscious mind an instant to consider, subdue, or overcome explicit expression of our unconscious mind. In other words, conscious breathing makes our life contemplative which can lead to a personal insight into how we relate with one another and get a transformative insight into one planetary family. Then, all are kin, there is none other.