For a very long time I have been interested in the mind-brain connection and the answer to the question above. I was convinced that the mind had to be separate from the brain in some way. If not, how can we imagine (and I do imagine and am far from alone) that there is more than just this life? Yet, how do we explain that we are more than what we see? As George Lucas wrote for his character Yoda, "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." *
Every bit of research reinforces the view that, for our body, this is all there is. Brain studies show that when a part of our brain is damaged, by physical means, or more gradually by age or disease, our character changes as well. Those who have seen the effects of dementia on their loved ones know this all too well.
Yesterday my son pointed me to a podcast** of the NPR (National Public Radio in the USA) program Radiolab with the clever and meaningful title Unraveling Bolero. The story is about two artists, Maurice Ravel, composer of Bolero, a highly repetitive, popular piece of orchestral music from the later part of his life's work, and Anne Adams, who in her forties quit her career as a research scientist to embrace creativity in another direction - visual art. Without giving too much away, because the podcast is very well done (as are all of the Radiolab programs), both Ravel and Adams died from complications arising from progressive aphasia. Ravel's composing of Bolero and Adams' sudden embracing of the visual arts were early symptoms of deterioration in brain function.
I have been thinking a lot recently about a dream from very early childhood when I had no filter to tell me it was silly or impossible. This particular dream (I remember several) was of a time before my birth. "I" had agreed to leave a place where I knew everything in order to accept nothingness followed by life as a person in Canada in 1952. In the experience "I" agreed to do this because there was a potential to accomplish some important goal.
If we don't dismiss this dream as fantasy (and I don't) then it seems to contradict the belief that mind is something generated by our brain. Or does it? Is it possible that the Yoda quote above is close to the mark? Perhaps we (the body and brain we carry about) are host to a spirit that joins us as we are conceived, comes along for the ride, so to speak, and, finally, after this body dies, carries on in some way taking the essence of what was experienced.
It might be that the connection we often feel to the divine is an artifact of this hosting process that each of us participates in. In a very real way, we are connected to a higher power, and this is only a small glimpse into how large a connection it is, and what the nature of that higher power might be.
*Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
**
I suppose we all, at one time or another, ask the question (sometimes repeatedly), "What is the purpose of life?" Once the usual pat answers are dealt with, having children, having a career and so on, the question still remains. As I grow older, that question becomes ever more important. It may be that the question will never be answered because to know the answer may defeat the purpose of life.
ReplyDeleteThat does not mean that to pursue the task of finding meaning to life is a pointless exercise: quite the contrary. It seems to me that pursuing that task opens up the way to discoveries of conditions that we can set in order that Life's purpose[s] can be achieved. From my own psycho-spiritual studies I have come to realise that the purpose I (that is all that my ego believes itself to be) am here is to act as if I were an altar on which some great work is fulfilled. "I" am not the star of the show! I play, necessarily so, a supporting role. It is an important role, I believe, but - I say again - a supporting role.
The real star of the show, the reason life needs to be lived, is that which lives its life through us. Some have called it their 'Higher Power', some their 'Higher or supernormal Self', some with an acquaintance (past and/or present) with Christianity, their Christ-Self. In all mystics, there is that sense of knowing that is pointing in the right direction.
I do admire your courage for putting this material 'out there' as a blog post. It risks relatively mild approbrium, or what may be worse, silent disapproval. As a final point, whatever the brain may say, the mind has the power to independently censure its findings. That also has been found through experiment.
Good post! Good post!
Ah Tom, I would love to believe that my life is an altar for a great work, but as time reveals these things, I think of myself as a "bit player". If I am lucky my lines are few, but they move the story along brilliantly.
DeleteUsing my moments upon the stage to put controversial things "out there" has been a hallmark of my life. Perhaps, if I am lucky, my mind will help me to censure those sort of thoughts as I get older, avoiding the label 'eccentric old lady'.
Hi Deanna,
ReplyDeleteI don’t believe the mind is separate from the brain in some way, as surely it is product of the brain as is suggested. But what you may not have considered more fully is that maybe consciousness itself was always in matter and precedes all existence? Call that fundamental consciousness – that was always immersed in all matter as the first life forms began. Higher forms of consciousness became possible with evolution, to take in more of what was already there?
So that the essence of all things (as in a spiritual sense) precedes the matter that makes up the physical you and me? It’s not as if we can take a single cell, from the trillions available, to determine its consciousness, but even so at this basic cellular level, it can override its genetic blueprint. That is when its cellular brain detects itself under attack from intruders.
Hence I am inclined to think the mind brain conundrum is maybe the wrong question, since I believe the two are inseparable. Like trying to determine the difference between the shore and the sea at the foreshore, when the tides determine whether it is land or sea.
The richness of this interaction with consciousness may improve with maturity just as it may fade given dimentia, but it remains as integral to eternal recurrence. Hence, I believe that belongs to another realm to which we may never lay claim to understand, as the mystics might say it is ineffable.
Hence I think there’s far more to it than the song implies. I like the analogy Tom presented plus his ideas, although I would couch it in a slightly different way that I trust is evident in my comment. The memories and richness of our consciousness, like energy, don’t go away, or amount to nothing, but form part of the eternal recurrence, in the grand scheme of things to which we are not privy.
Best wishes
I will admit that for most of my life, as a rational sort of person, these (see below) would have been my first line of inquiry. While I am quite willing to accept that cells have a sort of consciousness, the idea of cellular memory doesn't make much sense to me I'm afraid. After all, cells die, and so, where is the continuity that my dreams seem to indicate?
DeleteThere is little doubt that either I am deluded, and there is no such thing as a higher power - a spirit of love that is external and eternal, or we have yet to find the mechanism for its existence so we can study and believe in it. And after all, it is in the nature of humans to want to know how everything works. As my spirit guide Aadi would say - "an endearing quality."
As you can tell, I too shall stubbornly continue to believe in something which is eternal: "Deanna" and all of these cells with their mechanisms will cease but something else that is co-creating my reality will continue just as it existed before these cells, even if I can't name it.
Brain States and Mechanisms of Consciousness articles: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/8360/brain-states-and-neural-mechanisms-of-consciousness#articles
Hi Deanna,
ReplyDeleteMy point may not have been well made, so let me try to put it another way.
As in the biology of belief, our consciousness is made up of trillions of individual cells and their network of interactions inclusive of the vast interlocking circuitry of the brain itself. I am sure you would agree it’s a case of the more we know about this complexity the more we realise what we don’t know. The human brain is the most complex thing yet discovered in the Universe.
Any spiritual overlay of creative energy or spirit you want to attach to that will vary –as to how we make sense of existence, or how that lives on in some way for believers.
As you would also know all cells have memories, otherwise you could not be born- so that however you want to personalise that is your choice- what makes sense to us. All I am saying is I don’t believe you have to separate the mind and the body to believe in a higher creative spirt. That used to be the conventional wisdom, but I don’t personally believe that anymore. along with a lot of others. Rather any distinction cannot be observed, whilst acknowledging it exists. For instance n the mass I attend we say may your spirit go with you. as if it is separate- whereas whilst we exist in this earthly state I always thought that wasn't a very sensible thing to say.
Finally a question for you ! Is there any difference between a pain you feel, the image you see as a representation in the brain or in the thought process that was employed to do this post?
Are they not all part of the same consciousness (as in reality)that provides us with the rich narrative that forms part of our existence and may manifest itself in the life thereafter.
Best wishes
If there was a time when I saw the totality of my creativity as being somehow divinely inspired, or guided, that is not now. So, to answer, pain is instinctively felt - wouldn't it be lovely to be able to control reaction to pain, or other stimulus. Pictures from where I am, what I'm doing, they all come instinctively. In contrast to that, when my imagination sees something, the pictures come easily. When I read music, and process that into sound via voice, or an instrument, that is different, but I do not imagine it to be in any way magical, or divinely inspired. This body has been worked hard for a long time to be able to do that. When I put ideas to paper, I'm not sure. I haven't ever studied to write. The images and thoughts swirl about and then the words have to be crafted. I suspect all that swirling about has to do with nerve cells firing in some chaotic way. But all of these things come, originally, as reaction to stimulus. I won't say that I'm not influenced by my connection with some other stimulus - a higher power perhaps, because I have no idea where ideas come from.
DeleteLindsay,
ReplyDeleteThere appears to be a great deal of intellectual analysis going on here, which fails to address the fact that matters psychospiritual do not lend themselves to that kind of analysis, or indeed any analysis at all perhaps. In other words the ego, with its concomitant thought and emotion functions, has no room for any form of intuitive function.
We need to be very careful about what words we use. They may be fine in intellectual philosophy but not necessarily so in spiritual philosophy. As "words are all we have" (Bee Gees and others) great care must be exercised because words carry baggage. It is what lies behind the words that matters, otherwise we risk idolising words.
The point remains, what is the answer to Deanna's dream, as well as many other peoples' similar experiences? It seems to me that either we accept that we are all hopelessly narcissistic, and all our meditations merely point to a mirror image of ourselves, or we accept that there are questions here which we cannot answer. Perhaps to continue to ask the questions is important, but to accept that answers may not be forthcoming by intellectual analysis.
Hi Tom,
ReplyDeleteWhilst it’s true I didn’t address the question of the dream, it seemed to me one could reasonably construe the post could invite discussion on the mind body conundrum. The dream might have some real meaning but I don’t feel qualified to make a comment.
There was no intention to luxuriant in any idolisation of words nor is there anything to construe behind what I say other than I have a passionate interest in the subject matter. As a matter of interest I am not beholden to analytics, or analytical philosophy or indeed wedded to any such intertlectualism as you may or may not seek to imply.
I will admit however to liking Nietzsche’s idea of philosophising with a hammer. That may sound egoistic but it isn’t since it relies more on intuition than analytics.
Some philosophers, like Emerson verge on spiritualists or arc transcendentalists, whilst others gravitate to talk more about reality and wisdom but the modern types have just about all abandoned any pretence to special knowledge about anything and simply rely on a more comprehensive narrative- to ask questions without believing one has to have a definitive answer. That is the group in which I belong.
Best wishes
Hi Lindsay,
ReplyDeleteI liked your response. Whilst I have no wish to take over Deanna's post I would like to finalise my contribution with the following thoughts.
1. There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of the little boy who asked his younger brother, concerning their previous existence, "Quick, tell me what it was like. I am forgetting." Perhaps the Truth/Mind/God is so overpoweringly wonderful that we need to forget it in order to deal with our realist lives. Otherwise we might give up on necessary, material life before we have begun.
2. Perhaps we need to keep asking questions, or seeking to define the right question, to keep our connections with that Otherness in some sort of spiritual working trim.
3. Father Richard Rohr has talked a great deal about the two halves of life. The first is that in which we learn to deal with our realist lives, whilst the second half is concerned with 'correcting' the mistakes of the first half and, perhaps, preparing ourselves (or allowing ourselves to be prepared) for what is to come.
4. As Dr. Giordano Bruno, that heretic philosopher of the 16th(?) century, allegedly said, "We live in an infinite universe. There must, therefore, be room for an infinite number of answers (presumably to an infinite number of questions)."
5. Thus our dreams in early childhood, like Deanna's, and our Pathworking experiences in later life, define a pause in a life being lived beyond this material life. I suppose all we seekers after truth have had to face the question, "Is this all there is?" And the answer comes back, as if from the future, "No, there is more, much more!"
Thank you again, Deanna, for putting this subject before us for discussion.