Life, Brains and Mind.
"All problems exist in the language". (L. Wittgenstein).
In between my first essay written in 1982 and published on this site
since its inception in 2002 and the present text there is a time lapse
during which more essays were written and, as well, here published.
Clearly during this period ideas changed, although not radically and
possibly knowledge increased. To borrow a statement from Mahatma Gandhi
"At times of writing I never think what I have said before. My
aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given
question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself
to me at a given moment. The result has been that I have grown from
truth to truth." But a statement which appears several times
in the previous works and was never properly explained still holds,
and that is "life is not our experience, but we are an experience
of Life" where "Life" with the capital "L" stands for the life
which pervades and sustains the cosmos. The mystery of life is humanity's
impassable stumbling block and a solution to the conundrum which has
occupied the human intellect since its dawn might never be arrived
at, in this respect we are in the stance of a painting trying to understand
its painter. "Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of
solution, but it contains certain known factors." [1]
When we look at a building in its complex, we perceive its outlines;
then within the same its distinctive features strike our imagination:
nice outfits and ornaments, or old ones and falling apart, or whatsoever.
We seldom, if ever, give a thought to that which is hidden beyond
the plaster, namely, bricks, stones, cement or whatever keeps it standing.
Sadly, we normally do the same thing when we look at or think about
our physical temple. We perceive an image and appreciate its youth,
or its beauty; or we despise its manifest old age, or its ugliness
and all sort of things. All in all we perceive a living entity, so
dressed, so moving, so behaving, so attractive or so repulsive. We
look at it just like we look at the building above mentioned; we hardly
if ever give a thought to the hidden structure which lies beyond the
skin and bones which keeps it together. We are struck and narcissistically
attached to the outward appearance. This hidden structure however,
as we are too well aware, is made up by a myriad of living organism
acting in concert, the cells which make up the various important organisms
within the body itself. Each of these cells, singly among thousands
of billions of them, has a life of its own, a motive power and intelligence
and thence this temple of ours, as such, is not an individual living
being but the sum total of uncountable microscopic organisms’ lives,
each thriving with an exact purpose, an unerringly set goal. We are
barely conscious that these myriad of lives are the very pedestal
not only of our physical frame, but as well of our real essence, that
which is not conditioned by spacetime; calling it essence
is a linguistic necessity, but such it is that cannot be named simply
because it is beyond the spacetime frame; as well, saying that it
is frames it within spacetime and so, again, we have to rely
on linguistic inadequacy. This complex and tangible frame of ours
should then be properly visualized for what it is and not from the
outward appearance of the structure. Looking at ourselves in such
a wise a different reality is perceived, a greater, incomparably richer
image teeming with life strikes our mental vision and widens its horizon
towards border-less visions. Calling it “our physical temple” is not
inappropriate because here it is that, like in prayer in a holy place,
a greater discernment of our real place in nature, as well as a greater
understanding of the nature within ourselves develops and matures;
a keener view of what we really are.
Now, while relaxing under the shadow of a jacaranda tree in my spoiled
verandah, the sky brownish from the dust carried up in this period
by the desert's winds (kamsin) from the lowlands and foretelling the
approaching of a desperately needed rainy season the thought that
biological life, all of it, be it a unicellular organism, or your
pet, or anyone of the seven billion humans moving on this beautiful
planet independently of the sensory organs perceiving them is a projection
of images crossed my mind (if this 'mind' is really belonging to me;
I have some reservations about that!). That such grand projection
of three dimensional images which make up the universe so as we perceive
it might be a grand illusional display is not a new concept, we may
trace it as far back as Abraham since "... the name assigned to Abraham’s
father was Terah, a “maker of images” and even beyond in ancient myths
and eastern philosophical thought.
These images are mental (more about mind and mental later) expressions
which actually do not belong to the perceiver even if the percipient
appropriates them as a sine qua non which is an indispensable
existential means of any organic form of life. This concept apparently
broadened my vision of Life or, to say it differently, disclosed the
important truth [8]
that Life itself (as “source”, without plunging ourselves in the teleological
doctrines or the metaphysical problems of its origin and what sustains
it) is a great mental process loosing itself into eternity; eternity
into space, eternity into time and quite likely some other dimension
which must remain undisclosed to our limited perceptions.
Hence the meaning of “we are an experience of Life” looses it nebulosity
and a new threshold is crossed, a new vision appears: Life is a mental
process with no bounds hence now I fall into the subsequent logical
question: if this is so there is no illusion into it, no maya,
[9]
and the concept arises that nothing of that which apparently belongs
to our mental processes ever gets lost, everything adds up into an
infinite bucket with no holes holding it, it may be inferred, for
its own supra-cosmic existence, or evolution. This lays bare the fact
that everything is exactly how it ought to appear: the perception
of a Helicobacter pylori perforating a stomach; that of a
cat missing a step and falling off a skyscraper; that of a fighter
killing an enemy; or, a scene of sensual love are real in themselves
and as such appear to the percipient which however is sustaining an
illusionary form of his own mind. Clearly there is a sequence, an
imponderable perhaps not completely at odds with Henri Louis Bergson's
hypothetical élan vital [2]
which has to be synchronized between the nervous and sensorial systems
of diverse, but taxonomically related, organisms which enables diverse
spectators to experience the same visions.
Since Nothing is more difficult than to express in simple words our
ignorance, I am not sure how clear the precedent conceptualization
is, so I will add this: the keyboard I am tapping is as real as the
person who is tapping it but this is the classical cogito ergo
sum, a relative reality, that of the perceiver and the perceived
and as such belonging to a world which to us is tangible and real;
a world made up of tangible images but which, of itself, is an idealization
of something beyond our concept of reality. We live through the illusion
of this world's reality and it ought to be so, the sine qua non
giving meaning to life. Yet the world is not an illusion, just kick
a stone if you want to prove otherwise; the illusion is the mental
perception of the action, even the tangible reality of the pain we
feel after such a feat!
Paradoxically that which creates the illusion of the phenomenal
world gives us the means to perceive it as real but only that that
[which creates the illusion] is real and therefore we cannot perceive
it. This brings me back to Krishna's “The unreal never is: the Real
never is not” (Bhagavad Gita 2:16).
My riddle concerning Life apparently solved, the next question goes
to another ancient problem of mine: "what is the mind?" One answer
comes by itself: Life (capital "L"), which I spoke of as a mental
process of cosmic scale and Mind (capital "M") equate and seemingly
here there is no way I can trespass. The mind which exists per
se, the common denominator beyond physical existence cannot be
expressed in words, it belongs to the transcendental kingdom and as
such it must be realized. We are forced to somehow imagine it as well
as to locate it within our restricted conception of infinity, but
infinity as such does not exist, it too is a mental concept like the
void or nothingness. Our mental concepts forcefully employ time and
space because of time and space we are constructed, spacetime creatures
we are. Is this an unsurpassable limit? Then there is that mind which
supposedly is a mental process exclusive of some inferior being, that
Homo sapiens who thinks that he is the culmination of creation (sic!).
I fully agree that these beings have an intellectual machinery encased
in a bony shrine which enables them to think but I have some reservations
concerning the human mind, or an individual mind as such, I am prone
to exclude the individuality of any 'mind' [3]
whatsoever in the phenomenal world which we belong to. This, however,
does not mean that we are marionettes at the mercy of a puppeteer;
doubtlessly we are granted a certain degree of freedom.
Here I have to go back to " … an imponderable perhaps not completely
at odds with Henri Louis Bergson's hypothetical élan … etc."
and visualize a new image - or better - a system which acts on all
biological life; this must be that same intelligence which spins the
electrons around the atomic nucleus and ostensible all the way down
to particle and quantum physics' phantom entities. For the present
purpose I will take into consideration mainly those beings who are
the culmination of creation even if those below down even to a virus
invading a unicellular organism are all included in the system, therefore
I will use the words 'human mind' but exclude 'my' mind in
what follows albeit I have to make a concession to the undeniable
fact that I do have a brain, a piece of incredible biological electronics
whose circuitry is made up of capacitance, inductance and resistance
which however does not come serially off a conveyor belt. It is an
electrical powerhouse, it is a camera, it is a computer, it is a timer,
it is a color television set, it is an organizer and everything else
but there cannot exist, as luck would have it, two identical brains
anywhere in the cosmos, coming from the same blueprint and strictly
obeying equal parameters; that one-and-half kilogram mass of extremely
delicate soft tissue enclosed in a bony shrine is an interface
which commands and receives feedback from a multiplicity of organs
and billions of cells. What its degree of freedom is in the system
I cannot know; brains are actors in a comedy, the comedy of life.
(Ponder the last three words!)
Still, brains are subservient to the strands of double helixes of
DNA and RNA [4]
the incredible biological coils which somehow control the system but
I have to eschew this genetic topic due to my ignorance in the specific
matter. Even so since coils are my preferred pieces of electronic
components I stick to my knowledge of electronics and scanty knowledge
of neural circuitry for any analogy and to my obsession with resonance.
Resonance is an effect of a tuned circuit (the flow of an electrical
current through an inductor, or coil, and a capacitor connected in
series or in parallel [5])
and every biological entity which somehow invariably harbors this
circuitry has a specific resonance, be it an elephant, the person
reading these lines or a shiga bacillus; even the earth as
a whole has a specific resonance(Schumann
resonance see also Extremely Low Frequency Magnetic
Fields - "Man is a bio-cosmic resonator.") and no less
so a cosmic galaxy; resonance is what maintains the balance of every
form of life, not less so even of apparently inert matter; untune
it (dissonance) within its own environment and what depends on it
will be be disrupted and eventually become extinct as such.
We may suspect that, eschewing an individual mind, (a human mind)
there is an agent through which the resultant of our brain's
electrical circuitry at a given moment (an electromagnetic field which
is detectable around the skull) can access to, use or elaborate upon
in accordance with its resonance, or affinity - within a specific,
as such restricted, frequency band - with some part of the mysterious
medium which sustains the electromagnetic spectrum which is the core
of the physical universe; it is that beyond which, consciously,
we cannot access to but which gets a feedback from the images brought
about by its own being. Were it not so there would be no affinity
between two similar - although non identical - brains and the span
of perceptions common to them; each one of us would be a lonely sort
of zombie lost somewhere on the planet, unable to share or communicate
with each other. Hence what I envisage is that which I called an ‘imponderable’
to which we have limited access, so far as we can tune into it and
which is a commonality for that specific organic structure which does
have an indisputable existence, that human brain which is, to use
an analogy, a microprocessor made up of seven layers of neocortex
coordinating all the activities of the structure which brings it along.
This stated, I can say that what I wrote down to this point is none
other that the elaboration of some information, presently somewhat
confused, right or wrong as it may be, tuned or untuned, which my
brain perceived but which does not belong to me individually - to
a strictly personal mind. It is like fishing in a muddy pond, you
see a small surface but you have no idea of what the line will bring
into the open air. All in all the hard part however is to accept the
concept that I am mind-less, to throw away my individuality but here
another variable enters into the equation, awareness. [6]
Awareness depends exclusively on the brain perceptual faculties and
of that, from personal experiences, [7]
I can have no doubts whatsoever; I am also fully aware of what I am
not anymore aware, but this may simply be classified as remembrance
and does not belong to the present moment. These are perceptions and
all sense perceptions are elaborated in the brain, they are the sum
total of awareness and awareness itself is what creates our intellective
faculties or, to say it differently, the intellect is a response to
impinging awareness. On the other side while fully aware of what I
am presently writing I am not, in the least, aware of the source dictating
it; that possibly comes from a personal storehouse of those intellective
faculties which accumulate (or get lost, like in brain's diseases
and dementia) in the course of time and 'mind' has nothing to do with
it; a brain's fallout! The argument here is that awareness and intellective
faculties do away with the concept of 'mind' unless we use the term
‘human mind’ strictly denoted as the sum of intellective faculties
and awareness, doing away with all the tentative and uncertain definitions
which in the course of time have tried to explain it since, so as
we conceive it, the mind is a construct to which we ascribe perception,
reasoning, memory, feelings, associations and ideation; nay!
it is simply a psychical conceptual creature born of our
spacetime unsurpassable limits therefore as a separate entity it does
not exist, in other words, we do not have a personal mind as such.
Awareness and intellective faculties result from neurological interactions
in the brain, not from some undefinable individual extra-physical
entity even if awareness itself is not strictly restricted to the
perceivable physical environment and here, again, I return to "nothing
of that which apparently belongs to our mental processes gets lost,
everything adds up into an infinite bucket with no holes holding it
for its own cosmic existence, or evolution ...there is a sequence
… etc.” Then the conjunct work of awareness and intellective faculties
elucidate another somewhat nebulous entity, the human psyche, (forget
all the compartments, viz. id, ego, animus, anima, shadow and so on
which psychologists and related disciplines added to it) that hidden
laboratory where the inner workings of conscious and unconscious processes
are responsible for our ways of confronting our inner and outer environments,
that repository of our life experience which pushes us forward in
accordance with what previously enriched it and with a sense of what
might follow. Let us simply call it psyche, and and be content with
the fact that we do not have a psyche, we are a psyche! and
our organic structure is an appendage of the same; it thrives from
the feedback that our senses relay to it from the environment, conscious
and unconscious; and it reacts so that we can adapt and react to the
environmental challenges. The relation is that one cannot exist without
the other, there is no independent survival of one or the other yet
in effect an imprint of this speckle of life leaves its trace in the
immensity of spacetime.
[1]
Nikola Tesla.
[2] Here
I am not, in the least, taking into account H.P. Blavatsky and the
theosophist's ether and force; however, that very selfsame science
which sent ether to limbo is now tentatively reconsidering it. The
pure nothingness into which the universe is immersed clearly must
have some undetectable property since, whatever it may be it is ...
nothingness! (as energy!?!) at least
to our perceptions and to the perception of our advanced technological
instruments. “Explaining the Workings of the Universe without recognizing
the existence of the ether is futile.” – Nikola Tesla. (Albert Einstein
disregarded the ether's existence.) See "Tesla
Versus Einstein"
[3] - See Panpsychism
and Panprotopsychism - David J. Chalmers --- “Panpsychism, taken literally,
is the doctrine that everything has a mind. ... we can understand
panpsychism as the thesis that some fundamental physical entities
have mental states.” (I am not sure of what the chair I am sitting
on is presently thinking about!)
[4] - Of the 3% of human
DNA that is coded and expressed, about 50% of that is devoted to the
human brain. This suggests that maybe as much as 30-40% of non-coding
human DNA may be related to the functioning of the brain; of the 3%
of human DNA which is required to build a human being, 20% of that
is used to create a brain, and another 30% of that DNA is expressed
in the process of running and maintaining the brain (Brain, 1990).
That is, 50% of the 3% of DNA which is coded, serves the human brain.
Hence, since 97% of the 140,000 or more genes (and their 3 billion
or more base pairs) that make up the human genome are repressed, up
to 50% of that and thus perhaps as many as 50,000 repressed genes
and over a billion base pairs of nucleotides may be available for
future cerebral metamorphosis and expansion of the brain. Given that
over 90% of human DNA is dormant and silent and as tens of thousands
of silent genes (and almost 3 billion base pairs) have yet to be expressed,
the likelihood is that evolutionary metamorphosis on this planet will
continue well into the future.
[5]
1 -An excited state of a stable
particle causing a sharp maximum in the probability of absorption
of electromagnetic radiation.
2 - A vibration of large amplitude
produced by a relatively small vibration near the same frequency of
vibration as the natural frequency of the resonating system. (http://www.wordwebsoftware.com/)
[6] - State of elementary
or undifferentiated consciousness. Synonyms: cognizance, consciousness,
knowingness, sentience. (http://www.wordwebsoftware.com/)
[7] - An acoustic accident
deprived me of my hearing to the extent that I lost great part of
my hearing faculties, that is, I am aware but of a few of the sounds
in the environment and fully aware of the hellish tinnitus which will
follow me to the grave; an experienced ophthalmologist butchered (term
used by other professionals) my left eye and deprived me of my awareness
of the left side of the world; old age brings along the full awareness
of unremitting loss of strength and vitality (and in due time a lifeless,
cold and rotting corpse will have no awareness of anything at all).
[8] "...
only that which can be received which the particular mind is capable
of receiving. That is its truth… Absolute truth consists in this,
that it is impossible of correction. But the stages being relative
are in a sense corrected; not in the sense that they fail according
to a standard applicable to the stage of particular development for
which they are appropriate; but because the mind, enriched and transformed
in its continuing advance, moves towards another truer attitude and
standpoint.” Sir John Woodroffe – The World as Power – pp. 16, 17
- Ganesh & Company – Madras 600017 – 1974.
[9] "Maya ... is, not 'illusion',
but Experience in time and space of Self and Not-Self." Sir
John Woodroffe – S'akti and S'akta – p. 20 - Ganesh & Co. -(Madras)
Private Ltd. Madra-17 - 1969.
"... Maya-an un-explainable manifestation of
Brahma as non-Brahma yet nothing in truth but Bramna" - Sir John Woodroffe
– The I'sopanisad – p. 33 - Ganesh & Co.-(Madras) Private Ltd.
Madra-17 - 1971.
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