An Introduction to "An Insult to Intuition"

Photo by Nerf Portraits on Unsplash

Why are we here?

Something tells me that the answer to this question is to attempt to answer the question while having fun while we are at it. In other words, we are here to try to figure out why we are here to begin with. If we can have a few laughs along the way, all the better.

That’s what I think. More precisely, that’s what I feel. That’s what I mean by intuition, a kind of knowing that doesn’t emerge from my head but from my heart instead.

For someone who has spent so much of his life thinking about things, I am surprised by how easy it has been for me to put aside my desire to know using only my head and to start using my heart too. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I’ve been wrong about so many things for so long. Stop doing what doesn’t work. That’s the smartest idea my mind has ever come up with.

Yes, our thoughts can be useful too. They can help us enjoy this, whatever this is, more. For example, take this thought: Don’t take yourself so seriously. That helps a lot.

Thoughts can also save us time. Ask yourself this, are you more interested in proving yourself right or making absolutely sure you aren’t wrong? These are two different ways of getting to the truth of the matter.

If it’s the former, I suggest that there will inevitably be times when you will remain hoodwinked, perhaps for the rest of your life. If it’s the latter, you may think that you will waste your entire life only to discover you were right all along. However that doesn’t happen, not in my experience anyway.

You see, at some point, if you are paying attention, your intuition mercifully appears and lets you know that you have gotten to the bottom of things, perhaps sooner than you would have expected. That’s the great thing about your heart: it’s compassionate.

In any case, the bottom line is that if your belief about something brings you joy and doesn’t hurt anyone, there really isn’t a good reason to waste time second guessing yourself anyway.

What’s this substack about?

This is my attempt to invite my colleagues in science, medicine and philosophy to consider a different way of looking at the world. My intention is not to lecture anyone about the way things are. In fact, every piece I share here is a discussion of a subject where I have, at some point, changed my mind. You might say that this is a collection of all the things I have been wrong about—and in most cases, for decades.

Putting humility aside, let me briefly write a few things about what brought me here.

I am an only child of parents that immigrated to the United States from South India in 1965. I earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T. (‘88) and worked in the Aerospace and Defense Industries for six years. In the spring of 1992 I participated in a research expedition to the polar ice cap funded by the Office of Naval Research. That experience at the “top of the world” where we used cutting-edge technologies for military purposes completely changed my life. After returning, I was no longer willing to participate in any effort that wasn’t directed to the alleviation of suffering on this planet.

I received my medical education at Baylor College of Medicine (‘98) and training in anesthesiology at The University of Pennsylvania (‘02). I became a Diplomate of the American Board of Anesthesiology in 2003 and have been in clinical practice since 2002.

Closely observing thousands of patients under anesthesia led me to ask fundamental questions around ideas that have gone unchallenged for a very long time: What does it mean to be awake? Does awareness require a functioning body or does it arise of its own? I was astounded to realize that our understanding of who we are as conscious beings is based on assumptions that can easily be overturned if we are willing to examine them openly.

This was another watershed moment for me. It turns out that unchallenged assumptions underpin our understanding of much of the world outside of the operating room as well. It is a matter of how closely we are willing to look.

Beyond my formal training in science and medicine I have a deep interest in hypnotherapy and received training in clinical hypnosis in 2014. I am a fan of “the work” of Byron Katie, a practitioner of Vipassana, Kriya Yoga, Non-dual Saiva tantra and a student of the Law of ONE. I am also a father and a husband.

If you aren’t familiar with these things it really doesn’t matter. If you are, it may give you some insight into the lens through which I am describing what I see.

In 2020, during the darkest months of the pandemic, I tried to put it all together in my first (and only) book: “WOKE. An Anesthesiologist’s View”.

At the time I thought the title would be catchy because of the juxtaposition of “woke”to the subject of anesthesiology. Alas, the term “woke” has morphed into something appreciably different from what it connoted when the book was published. If I could, I probably would rename the book, may be to something like “An Insult to Intuition”. But then again, there really aren’t any mistakes, are there?

My Hope and Intentions

I envision a world where we return to our natural state of innocence and curiosity, free of cynicism and apathy. We were all there once, perhaps many years ago. What has happened? Have we gotten smarter and purged ourselves of naïveté? Or are we believing an inaccurate story of who we are and what the world is really like? If the story is wrong, who exactly has been writing it? What is your intuition telling you?

I am most interested in how we come to understand our world and what we are told about it. Are we biased? How would we know if we were? It’s not easy for a mind to recognize its own biases. It’s like asking someone to see their blindspots. They have to be deduced. It requires curiosity, attention and a few helpful pointers. This is where the work begins.

Although I have painted a rather sanguine view of the world, returning to innocence and regaining “child’s mind” requires us to take a harder look at ourselves and trusted people and institutions. This path back home can get very bumpy.

I hope to offer you a few threads to pull on. Maybe something might unravel for you and leave something more precious in its place…

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