My brain is following up on a previous blog post, "Brains are us: a fresh thought for a New Year." Now, I almost just wrote My brain is causing me to follow up...
This shows how difficult it is to break the habit of assuming that there is a "me" and also "my brain." Slice my head open or put me in a MRI machine: evidence of the brain's existence will be clear.
But evidence of a "me" existing -- where is it? Really, nowhere to be found.
If you doubt this, pick up just about any Zen book. Or Buddhism book. The existence of a separate self is a widespread assumption, yet by no means universal.
The thought, "You are your brain," used to bother me. A lot.
Because I hated the idea that when my brain died, so did I. Meaning, the sense of "me." If consciousness is physical, when the material brain stops working, so does the consciousness of the body to which the brain is attached.
Now, though, I find this notion entirely acceptable, if not downright pleasing. It's hard to put this positive feeling into words, but I'll give it a try.
For most of my life I've loved the thought of oneness. Even wrote a book about it.
The One I longed for, though, was immaterial. Supernatural. Spiritual. Other-worldly. It was a unitary reality beyond the physical; the foundation of this world that wasn't really a part of it (because it is the One, partless).
This put unity far away, a goal to be reached rather than a reality to be immediately embraced.
Realizing that, almost certainly, the brain is me and I am the brain brings the One close to hand. No distance at all, really.
Materiality is everywhere evident. I am material. We are one. There is no difference between me/brain and other/world. All is the same substance.
There is something beautiful about this thought. Again, difficult to put into words.
I feel like a weight has been lifted from my psyche. I no longer feel the need to become anything other than what I already am: a brain experiencing itself; a strange loop of consciousness; matter becoming aware of materiality.
It's akin to the feeling I have when I wonder what it would be like to be a character in an alien computer simulation. Which, of course, could be true.
I could be wrong, but if I discovered that I was just a bunch of computer code constructed by a bored teenager from a super-advanced civilization in another galaxy, I think I'd feel a sense of relief.
Maybe you could call this "enlightenment."
Everything I believed to be solidly real, actually wasn't. At least, not real in the sense that I used to consider it was. So now the pressure is off. No need to figure out what reality is all about, because this is impossible for me to do.
I'm just a bunch of electrons configured in a temporary special way. In other words, pretty much what neuroscience tells me I am in this earthly reality: neurons doing their thing as a human brain.
Hope this makes some sense. If not, that's understandable. I am me (albeit not really) and you are you. Our brains are quite different, yet also very much the same.
For another perspective on this fascinating subject, check out "The brain... it makes you think. Doesn't it?"
You are not your brain. The brain that is said to be yours is a brain pretending to be the person who has said brain, when actually, you are a fictitious character the brain is recreating constantly.
Posted by: cc | January 03, 2014 at 08:14 AM
Oh my God !!!!!
I am my brain. I am my brain.
Hey, Brian, can't you dish out
reality a little less candidly ?
You can't just come out and tell
people the truth.
Stop it !!!!!
Posted by: Mike Williams | January 03, 2014 at 11:18 AM
Relax, Mike. Nothing to get upset about. You are not your brain. "You" are an illusion created by the brain that is said to be "yours". Feel better?
Posted by: cc | January 03, 2014 at 02:11 PM
Oh, that's great cc.
Now I am an illusion created by a slab of beef.
Now I feel much better.
Such a bright future ahead of me.
I am sure a hamburger feels the same way.
Posted by: Mike Williams | January 03, 2014 at 04:01 PM
See how self-effacing the brain is...equating itself with ground beef. Such humility!
Posted by: cc | January 03, 2014 at 05:10 PM
Leave objects such as brains to look after themselves and recognize the absence of their subject as an object. Brain? Who has one? Who is the who that has one? Who is the who who knows the who who has a brain?...and so on.
Who thinks he has a brain?
Who thinks he has anything?
It must be another self.
Who is that other self?
Who?
Yes, but who is who?
Just who, who else could it be?
'Who' can only be yet another self.
Well then, there must be another self to know that one!
But that can go on forever.
It is known as a perpetual regression and is an absurdity, logically a definition of something that is impossible...an endless series of selves, the existence of the last quite as impossible as the existence of the first.
Posted by: tucson | January 03, 2014 at 09:13 PM
Well you are all some much more than me. I'm not even a brain. Still just a speck of star dust waiting To Be Born.!
Posted by: june schlebusch | January 03, 2014 at 11:27 PM
"The essence of the independent mind is not in what it thinks, but how it thinks."
~ Hitchens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HbEUnd1iqQ
Posted by: Mike Williams | January 04, 2014 at 10:43 AM
Hi Mike thanks for another piece of the puzzle. Read the link. O Those Banks! Then went a little deeper into the "forest" Went to Chris Hitchens blog saw :This be the Verse: by Phil Larkin its the poem I gave to my daughter on my 70th when I got this lap top. I was saying sorry to her for all my F..ups. There was also "The Daffodils" by Wordsworth. Its the first poem I learnt at age 8. I'm beginning to understand how this Something Else works, Thanks for the crumb Hansel. Jeers from Gretal.
Posted by: june schlebusch | January 06, 2014 at 01:49 AM
No, not at all. You are you, the mind is overlaid on top of your consciousness (causal body), feelings are on top of that (astral body) and the physical body is on top of that. It's a 3 body prison we're all stuck in. Meditation is just remembering how all this mad shit hangs together.
Posted by: some_guy | January 06, 2014 at 04:33 PM
For your reading pleasure New York Times article about mapping the brain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/science/the-brain-in-exquisite-detail.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
Only problem is they can only find so much in the brain. They can't find mental illness or mental health. Not so far anyway.
Posted by: Skeptic | January 07, 2014 at 12:00 PM
To all those who may want a different perspective to the one that states we are just a glorfied piece of meat, I've posted an alternative viewpoint on the radhasoamistudies forum:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/radhasoamistudies/conversations/messages/225093
Posted by: manjit | January 16, 2014 at 03:15 PM