In this article we will continue our discussion of the Mind, focusing now on the physical counterpart to the mind – that is the brain. We first began to discuss the brain in Article 135 in relation to the holographic universe.
Here we will discuss the difference between the brain and mind, as well as the functions of the brain. In the next article we will focus on one particular part of the brain – that is, the pineal gland in the geometric center of the head. Then we will look at the various brain waves and their meaning before we get back into the psychological aspects of the Mind.
In Ancient Egyptian philsophy the Dwat, the “world of transformations” is the inner region of transformation beneath or within appearances, under the skin or membrane, so to speak, be it the crust of the earth or the membrane of a living cell, the skull or the face which covers the great transformer of the brain.”
The Brain & Brain Facts
To review Article 135:
The brain is faster and more powerful than a supercomputer. The brain storage capacity is considered virtually unlimited. It does not get “used up”. The latest research shows that the brain’s memory capacity is a quadrillion or 1015 bytes. This is about the same amount needed to store the entire internet!
The brain generates enough electricity to power an LED light bulb (12-25 watts). The brain contains about 86-100 billion microscopic neurons that send information to the brain at more than 268 miles per hour. This is 1016 impulses per second, 30 times more powerful than IBM Sequoia one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
The brain comprises about 2% of total body weight but uses 20% of its total energy and oxygen uptake. The brain needs a constant supply of oxygen to prevent brain damage.
The brain is 73% water and weighs about three pounds yet chronic stress and depression can cause measurable brain shrinkage.
Furthermore, there is no such thing as a left-brain or right-brain personality/skill type. We are not left-brained or right-brained; we are ‘whole-brained’.
Also, until recently, it was a “fact” that you were born with a set level of intelligence and number of brain cells. But it has since been discovered that your brain has the capacity to change throughout your lifetime due to a property known as brain plasticity. The brain can continue to form new brain cells via a process known as neurogenesis.
The average brain is believed to generate up to 50,000 thoughts a day. There are almost 200 known cognitive biases and distortions that cause us to think and act irrationally and unfortunately, of the thousands of thoughts a person has every day, it’s estimated that 70% of this mental chatter is negative — self-critical, pessimistic, and fearful. This is something that needs to be recognized, accepted, healed and transformed.
Ninety-five percent of your decisions take place in your subconscious mind.
The brain in your head isn’t your only brain. There’s a “second brain” in your intestines that contains 100 million neurons. Gut bacteria are responsible for making over 30 neurotransmitters including the “happy molecule” serotonin.1
The Function of the Brain
“The brain can be called simply the physical counterpart of the mind. By means of the brain the functions of the soul and intellect are connected with the body. Through the characteristics of the brain, events that are of nonphysical origin become physically valid. There is a definite filtering and focusing effect at work.
The brain is primarily an event-forming psycho-mechanism through which consciousness operates. The brain organizes activity and translates events, but it does not initiate them.
Events have an electromagnetic reality that is then projected onto the brain for physical activation.
The brain (and the entire physical system) is meant to insure your bodily survival and to follow your conscious beliefs about reality. There is always a harmonious unifying connection between your beliefs and activities.
Practically speaking, you do indeed form the appearance that reality takes through your conscious beliefs. Those beliefs are used as screening and directing agents, separating certain nonphysical probable events from others, and bringing them into three-dimensional actuality.”2
The Brain is not an Empty Slate upon Birth
“Your brain is far from an empty slate, waiting for the first imprint of experience; it is already equipped with complete “equations,” telling you who you are and where you have come from. Nor do you wipe that slate clean, symbolically speaking, before you write your life upon it. Instead, you draw upon what has gone before: the experiences of your ancestors, back – in your terms now – through time immemorial.”3
“Memory is perhaps the least understood of our cognitive faculties. It is not yet decided experimentally whether memory storage is neuro-electric, neurochemical or somatic – or even perhaps ultimately multi-aspected like the universe.
There is an older form of memory which responds directly to sounds, smells and images. These responses are particularly related to the recall experiences of the deeper, emotional, intuitive and dream nature. Now, while the newer, sophisticated, long-term human memory is located in the neo-cortex, the older, sensation-triggered memory seems to be located in the hippocampus of the mid-brain, which is associated with the primitive olfactory responses and is also in communication with the frontal lobe, the seat of abstract reason. The newer memory draws up fragments from the older, holistic memory, and then reformulates them in contexts suitable for the thoughts of the rational mind.
The ancient image of the brain is one of a constantly mutating, receptive organ, digesting and embodying the various experiences of consciousness as they appear in evolution.” ~ Robert Lawlor
The Brain’s Alliance with the Mind
“The conscious mind exists before material life and after it. In corporeal existence it is intertwined with the brain, and during physical life your earthly perceptions – your precise and steady focus within your particular space and time system – are dependent upon that fine alliance.
In physical life, your conscious mind is largely dependent upon the workings of your physical brain. You have a conscious mind whether you are in flesh or out of it, but when you are physically oriented, then it is connected to the physical brain.
The brain to some extent keeps the mind to a three-dimensional focus. It orients you toward the environment in which you must operate, and it is because of the mind’s allegiance with the temporal brain that you perceive, for example, time as a series of moments.
The brain channels the information that the mind receives to your physical structure, so that your experience is physically sifted and automatically translated into terms that the organism can understand. Because of this, physically speaking and in life as you think of it, the mind is to a large extent dependent upon the brain’s growth and activity.”4
“Our brains and bodies necessarily shape all our perceptions and have themselves come into existence and been shaped by the interaction of the same seen and unseen energies that have shaped every perceivable thing on earth,” explains Robert Lawlor. The enclosed tract of the brain and spinal cord uses the energies assimilated by the lower as support for the further transformation of Light into the subtle expression of mind and psyche.”
The Function of the Brain in Relation to the Conscious Mind & Unconscious Mind; Voluntary and Involuntary Systems of the Body
“In physical life the conscious mind must be connected with the brain, and in terms of time that organ itself must grow and develop. So all of your consciousness cannot be physically aware. The portion that must “wait for” the brain’s development is the part you call in life “the conscious mind.” The other portions can be called the inner self.
Now all of this inner self cannot become expressed even with its connection with the brain, since the brain must sift perception though the physical apparatus. The brain with its bodily connections must deal with the time lapses that sensual perception always implies.
The interior workings of the body, to be conscious, would have to deal with time sequences that would present the physically attuned consciousness with “mathematical” deductions and calculations far too numerous for it to handle. For example, it would have to keep conscious track of all the muscles, nerves, organs, cells, molecules and atoms, while manipulating the body in space and time.
[Remember: The brain contains about 86-100 billion microscopic neurons that send information to the brain at more than 268 miles per hour. This is 1016 impulses per second, 30 times more powerful than IBM Sequoia one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
And ninety-five percent of your decisions take place in your subconscious mind.]
Therefore a seeming division occurs, in which a portion of the invisible conscious mind is connected with the physical brain, and a portion of it is free of that connection. That latter part forms what you think of as the involuntary system of the body.
Again, it is important that you realize the initial nonphysical reaction to stimuli that sparks off all physical reactions.
There is constant interplay and communication between the areas of consciousness that are connected to the brain and those that are not. The “deeper” purposes of the consciousness involved “circulate” sometimes arising in the awareness that is joined with the brain. Information coming from those deeper sources of the self, reaching the areas connected to the brain, will be interpreted according to the beliefs of that most physically focused segment of the self.
To some degree, such inner data will be colored by the current beliefs of that part of the self most directly confronting the physical world. Those beliefs, however, are also constantly being examined by the inner self.”5
The Autonomic Nervous System
Robert Lawlor explains: “We find in the autonomic system [divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems] a representation of the universal Law of Inversion, the law governing the intensity of sound, gravity and light radiation – that is, the fundamental forces which order celestial systems and allow for the appearance of living systems on earth.
Homeostasis is a feedback network of thermo, photo, chemical and electromagnetic receptors which work to maintain a steady-state internal body climate, with heartbeat, oxygen-intake, temperature, blood pressure and electromagnetic balance remaining fairly constant.
The theory is that an organism favors behavior patterns which tend to move its internal state closer to homeostasis and refrains from those patterns which would tend to move it away from homeostasis. In this way the entire organism participates in the development of both learned and innate behavior patterns, and the brain really derives its adaptive capacities in evolution from coordinating external conditions and movements of the body with internal states of being, thereby sustaining homeostasis.
We need not interpret homeostasis as simply a regulator of physical drives along; remember that all emotional elements, as well as dream and subconscious levels, are wired into this system.
Based on ancient literature as well as on modern brain research, is that one aspect of yogic physical discipline was aimed at consciously gaining control over, and developing, the psychological and physical potentials related to the autonomic organization.
The simple fact that urination and defecation, two autonomic functions, are routinely brought under voluntary control in children as well as in pets through social and educational reinforcement gives evidence of the possibility that there may be many autonomic functions which may yield to voluntary mastery.
These innate systems of response may then really be only the broad, partially formed limits of bodily maintenance which can be, so to speak, fine-tuned through instrumental learning, self-knowledge and deep physical as well as psychological self-awareness.
It appears, therefore, that mastery of the autonomic controls, in other word a conscious, flowing homeostasis on many levels of life and mind, can free one to some extent from domination by the syndrome of appetite and satiation. The autonomic system, then, is both ancient yet still holds potential for a new neural organization.”
The Brain and Time
“Your brain gives you a handy and quite necessary reference system with which to conduct corporal life. It puts together for you in their “proper” sequences events that could be experienced in many other ways, using other kinds of organization.
The brain and other portions of the body, tune into your planet and connect you with numberless time sequences – molecular, cellular, and so forth – so that they are synchronized with the worlds’ events.
In surface terms the sense of “I” that you possess is the result of constantly emerging probable identities, given continuity in time through the physical apparatus of the body with its built-in intervals of nerve reaction.
You only remember the portion of your identity that is physically realized – those portions that are drawn into corporeal pattern. This is the result of the focusing and yet limiting behavior of the physical brain, for effective survival behavior in your reality depends upon time reactions.
The nerve patterns’ activity therefore causes the illusion of a present, in which your consciousness appears focused and alert.
In certain terms “future” events exist now, but they are too fast. They jump over the nerve endings too quickly, and physically you cannot perceive or experience them as yet. In such a way the cells retain their memory, though you do not perceive it, and the body is aware of so-called future occurrences, though a rule you do not consciously sense this.”6
The Brain and the Unlimited “Spacious” Mind
“When the mind races and runs, it sometimes has greater difficulty interpreting its activities to the brain, which is usually concerned with other realities only to the extent that they impinge upon it.
The mind can be far more aware of other realities than the brain, if it consciously believes in the greater reality of itself and its perceptions. When the brain also possesses this belief, it can open itself as much as possible to the mind’s activities. When it does, certain intuitive psychic and “intellectually spacious” experiences can be physically felt to some extent. The knowledge is interpreted through alterations in body sensation, which give it an important corporeal validity.
In such cases high mental and psychic activity is reflected in the body’s experience, providing a beneficial unity.
Here I have used the term “spacious” for workings of the mind and intuitions that exist in what you might call an accelerated range of action.
The normal intellect, oriented so precisely by beliefs to the inevitability of a one-focused kind of perception, is limited.
A certain kind of affirmation of self allows the brain to tune into these more spacious methods of perception that are the natural characteristics of the mind.
You will not use your spacious mind until you affirm its reality with yourself, and until you are ready to handle the additional data which will then become consciously available to one extent or another. But the spacious mind operates through your creaturehood; in your terms it represents latent abilities of consciousness that can be more or less normal functions.
There are built-in biological structures that are activated for the reception of such messages, and they have always been a part of your physical nature as a species. They will not be triggered on a personal basis until your own beliefs allow you to perceive the multidimensional layers of your own experience – or at least to accept the possibilities.”7
The Metaphysical Reality and the “Spacious Mind”
In Cosmic Core we continually discuss the two realms of reality: the seen physical reality of space/time and the unseen metaphysical reality of time/space. When we discuss the “spacious mind” we are specifically referring to the ability to ‘tune into’ this unseen metaphysical reality.
The reality of this metaphysical realm is that its properties are unable to be located within the coordinates of space and time. “If we restrict ourselves to the view that in order for something to exist it has to be ‘out there’ in locational space and time, then we will actually have to ignore a significant portion of reality taken as a whole. For reality as a whole includes both what is externally locatable and what is not locatable.”8
Jeremy Naydler in The Future of the Ancient World suggests three things we can do to reconnect once more with the “spacious mind” – the invisible reality of our soul and spirit. These are:
- Stilling our thoughts so that awareness is intensified at the inner threshold where thoughts arise.
“We can then become aware that there are certain thoughts that present themselves to us, coming into our consciousness from a depth that is not our own.”9
- Attending to our dreams and ‘living the symbolic life’.
“In order to attend properly to our dreams, we need to create an ‘inner space’ in our waking consciousness in which we allow the dreams themselves to come alive within us and to speak to us, a space where we can work with them. If we are able to do this, then it is possible to find that we are led beyond the personal dream image to a symbolic language that is bigger than ourselves.
When this becomes a matter of actual experience, then we may realize two things. First of all, that the inner world of myth and symbolic imagery, of which our dreams are composed, is not so much within us as that we are within it.
The second thing we may realize is that not only is our dream imagery the clothing of powerful psychic energies, but that these energies are more than simply objects we become aware of: they should also be regarded as subjects. The archetypal figures that frequent our dream-life have a certain autonomy, a certain independent life of their own, and in this respect they resemble the gods of ancient times.”10
- Practicing an ‘imaginative seeing’ of the natural world.
“This is to practice a different kind of seeing, a seeing into nonlocational space by activating the imagination. Normally when we look a developing plant, for instance, we simply see what is physically present to the eyes. It is, however, also possible to see imaginatively what is not there, but is nevertheless in the process of becoming present.”11
“In these three practices…it is possible to become aware once more of the reality of what is not ‘there’ – a reality than can become present to us in the three spheres of spirit, psyche, and nature. The reality that is ‘nowhere’ will then be experience by us as it should be – a reality that is after all ‘everywhere’.”12
“We all of us stand between two worlds: an outer world of objects in locational space, and an inner world that we become aware of within our own consciousness in nonlocational space…to leave out these nonphysical levels is to give a very partial picture from which all that is most important and most meaningful has been expurgated.
It is only be attending to and intensifying our inner life that we can begin to develop a true picture of reality that includes both the visible and the invisible, both the physical and the nonphysical aspects of existence.”13
Consciousness and the Brain
“Consciousness forms matter and not the other way around. Thought exists before the brain and after it.
In your terms, until now your consciousness has specialized in neurological patterning. This was extremely important while it learned the art of specialized focus. Now, however, it must begin to recognize that it can indeed expand, and bring into its awareness other quite legitimate realities.
The nature of probabilities must be understood, for the time has come in the world as you experience it where the greatest wisdom and discrimination are needed.
Your consciousness and neurological prejudice blind you to the full dimension of physical activity. The true implications of physical action are not as yet apparent to you. The “unknown” reality sustains you and the web of life as you understand it. Your conscious concepts must enlarge so that the conscious self can understand its true nature. As you think of it, consciousness is barely – barely – half developed. It has learned to identify with one small group of neurologically accepted responses. Portions of the brain not used lie latent, waiting for the recognition that will trigger them into activity. When this happens, the mind will become aware of the rich bed of probabilities upon which the ego now rides so blindly. The great latent-but-always-sensed dimensions of spiritualized creaturehood will then begin to flower.”14
Some Remarks on Brain Anatomy
The Ancient Portions of the Brain
“The so-called ancient portions of the brain (among them the brain stem – limbic system) contain “the mind’s memories.” Generally speaking, this means important data to which, however, no conscious attention need be given. None could be given, because the information deals with time scales that the more “sophisticated” portions of the brain can no longer handle.
The knowledge of the body’s’ own biological probabilities takes place at those ancient levels, and at those levels there is activity that results in a cellular communication existing between all species.
The brain has built-in powers of adaptation to an amazing degree, so that innately one portion can take over for any other portion, and perform its activities as well as its own. [Recall our discussion of the holographic brain and related scientific experiments in Article 135]. Beliefs in what is possible and not possible often dull that facility, however.
While the neural connections are specific, and while learned biological behavior dominates basically, the portions of the brain are innately interchangeable, for they are directed by the mind’s action.”15
The inner or hind-brain bulb which dominated during the reptilian phase of evolution is still present within us. Added on top of this is the mid-brain limbic area, which was the dominant mental apparatus during the mammalian phase of evolution; and finally there is a logarithmic emergence of the cerebral cortex in the evolution of the higher human being. The cerebral cortex, as pictured below, shows a logarithmic spiral curving out from the center of the brain.
The Hypothalamus & Thalamus
“Thalamus is the Greek word for chamber, room or sanctuary,” Robert Lawlor explains, “so that, in other words, the walls of our secret sanctuary are the lobes of the optic thalamus, whose posterior portion has direct connections with the pineal body, while the floor of this ventricle is the hypothalamus, which gives the nerve signals and secretions to activate the pituitary gland. In this region of the brain, then, one finds an intense intersection of two types of life-enabling neural signal systems: namely, the system based on neuro-chemical signals which characterize all plant life intersecting with the neuro-electrical nerve reactions, which are an additional system found only in animal life and responsible for increased mobility and, in humans, for the expression of individual will and action.
In the thalamus region, which is the center of the limbic or midbrain area we find a connection between the eye and the glands which allows for photosensitive periodicities in the body and is also the main filter and place of mediation between the instinctual, automatic, autonomic, emotional responses carried from all over the body and the higher brain centers of the cerebrum and its cortex. The thalamic region thus monitors all powerful and instinctual reactions and retransmits them to the cerebral cortex, but in a stepped-down or diluted form, thereby preventing any over-exaggerated motor responses from the conscious cortex. This is to say that great neural self-controlling and discriminatory activity occurs here.
Indeed, this region is so dominant in managing the emotional content of the mind and body that the motor controls for changes in facial expression – those which result directly from conscious or unconscious emotional states such as anger, tears, fear, joy – are all contained in the cortex in which most of the other motor terminal are situated. It is this instinctual and emotional content which, when retained unconsciously in the thalamus, sets up the tensions and lines which shape or warp the face and personality, and only when these deep, instinctual and emotional patterns are utterly removed from the thalamic system does the face reach full relaxation and become a pure, empty, timeless mask.
The floor of the sanctuary is the hypothalamus. This region controls the animal appetites (associated with food and sex), the pleasure and pain sensation, as well as the heat levels of the body. The hypothalamus is thus the body’s furnace, controlling the fires of our life and, through heat, all the metabolic rates of the organism. In the colder climates the body’s blood must be retained in the organs and deeper regions of the body in order to hold its temperature at the necessary homeostatic balance.
The hypothalamus is also the pleasure center, ramifications from it spreading through the brain. It has been verified further, that pleasure responses are not just connected to the satiation of physical drives, but rather than the same pleasure compensations underlie all intellectual process, such as thinking, learning, memory and so forth, as well, which lends scientific support to the ancient concept that it is ananda, or bliss, that moves and sustains universal conscious evolution.
Furthermore, metabolism is controlled by the endocrinal glands which secrete hormones – “exciters” – directly into the bloodstream. The master regulators of this hormonal system are the pineal and pituitary glands, and the activation of these is, in turn, often regulated and coordinated by the hypothalamus.”
The Frontal Lobes
“The frontal lobes of the brain will have much more use in fourth density [higher levels of consciousness we are aspiring to].
The primary mental/emotive condition of this large area of the so-called brain [the frontal lobes] is joy or love in its creative sense. Thus, the energies of the healing, the learning, the building, and the energizing — are to be found in this area. This is the area tapped by the adept. This is the area which, working through the trunk and root of mind, makes contact with intelligent energy and through this gateway, intelligent infinity.”16
The neurologist Nautas states: “If the limbic cortex, especially the basal part of the frontal lobe, is destroyed, this causes a complete loss of the sense of self. Any other part of the brain or body can be removed or substituted for with but little effect on one’s sense of self.”
Brain Hemispheres
“It is ridiculous to call one side or the other of the brain dominant, for the full richness of the entire earth experience requires utilization of both halves, as does dreaming.
[Remember, there is no such thing as a left-brain or right-brain personality/skill type. We are not left-brained or right-brained; we are ‘whole-brained’.]
The brain has abilities you do not use consciously because your beliefs prevent you from initiating the proper neural habits. Certain portions of the brain seem dominant only because of these neural habits that are adopted in any given civilization or time.”17
The corpus callosum, the vast bundles of hundreds of nerve endings which connect the divided hemispheres of the brain, is a place where a union of the left and right divisions of perceptual modes might be achieved.
The all-important Pineal gland and Cerebro-spinal fluid will be discussed in the next article.
Conclusion
In this article we have discussed the physical function of the brain in relation to the mind. The brain is the organ primarily responsible for sorting information, allowing in what is backed up by the system of beliefs. It is also extremely important for our survival in this 3D world of space/time.
If you want to access more information than you are currently able then your beliefs must be changed to allow for that possibility. It must be recognized that there is far more to reality, and to ourselves, than what meets the eye, and what is contained in one single lifetime.
The brain will not allow this information in until the Mind accepts it as truth.
Furthermore, we see that the function of the frontal lobes are for creating and experiencing joy and love, as well as healing, learning, building, creating and energizing. They also play an important role in telepathy as we know it now and as we will know it as we evolve and refine the activity.
We also briefly discussed the hemispheres of the brain and have seen that it is improper to claim one side of the brain or the other as dominant, since both halves are equally utilized in our experience.
In our society, this brain dominance issue is often relegated to a division between the rational thinker and the intuitive dreamer, which is used all too often to draw phony divisions between men and women, scientists and artists, or science and spirituality. These divisions are false and are based on limiting belief systems putrefying in dangerous dogmas that serve no one’s greatest good.
We will discuss rational thinking/intuition in great detail in Article 152 and we will see that each person, regardless of gender, age, background, education or personality type are capable of utilizing both of these activities of the mind.
As a matter of fact, it is of the utmost importance to learn how to balance both of these activities within yourself, no matter who you are, in order to be able to fulfill your highest potential for the greatest good.
- Alban, Deane, 72 Amazing Human Brain Facts (Based on the Latest Science), https://bebrainfit.com/human-brain-facts/
- Roberts, Jane, The Nature of Personal Reality, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1974
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- Naydler, Jeremy, The Future of the Ancient World: Essays on the History of Consciousness, Inner Traditions, 2009
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- Roberts, Jane, The “Unknown” Reality Vol. I, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1977
- Roberts, Jane, The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1979
- Elkins, Rueckert, McCarty, The Law of One, Session 61.13, http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=61
- Roberts, Jane, The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1979
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