by Brandon West
What is the true nature of mind, and what is the real function of our brains?
The purpose of this article is to provide evidence that strongly
indicates that you are not your brain, or your body for that matter, and
that the nature of mind, of memory, and of our brains may actually be
vastly different than we have been lead to believe.
Since time immemorial, man has been fascinated by the mind, leading
great thinkers from Hippocrates to Descartes to ponder the nature of
mind with wonder. Fast forward to modern times and observe how the mind
is still revered and is dominating our culture. We have a lot of firm
beliefs about the nature of mind, and I believe
the ego – our limited perception of ourselves – and thus human ignorance, is intricately tied in with these beliefs.
But the truth of the matter is that we only
understand a
fraction of the minds potential, i.e. it’s capability of rote
memorization and other analytically orientated functions, and we
use even less.
We know hardly anything about the brain let alone the nature of mind.
Is it possible that we are missing crucial aspects of its function and
entire areas of development and potential that simply slide under the
radar because they are not accepted by modern thought?
In this article we will explore the idea that the brain itself, with
its tissue and neurons that we have until now deemed the source of our
thoughts and identity, is actually just a tool,
a receiver of human intelligence and consciousness,
but not its source; and that the human mind is not sourced in the brain
any more than the internet can be found in your laptop or your modem.
“My brain is only a receiver. In the Universe there is a
core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have
not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it
exists.” - Nikola Tesla
Projected Memory on the Screen of Consciousness
To begin I would like to delve into the work of a Canadian neurosurgeon named Wilder Penfield. Through
his work with epileptic patients spanning from the 1930′s into the
1970′s he found that “stimulation of the human cerebral cortex with a
gentle electrical current sometimes awakens specific memories, at other
times dreams.” His work gave him insight into the function of the brain,
memory, mind, and the interactions between them.
(This information on Wilder Penfield’s experiments is from his lectures
The Mechanism of Memory, and
Some Mechanisms of Consciousness Discovered During Electrical Stimulation of the Brain unless otherwise specified.)
During brain surgery once the brain was exposed, he found that by
using an electrode that produced a “gentle” electrical current, he could
stimulate areas of the brain and get specific, repeatable, intriguing
and often times simply fascinating results. The patients were kept
conscious throughout the procedure so that the doctors could carry out a
conversation throughout the operation and receive immediate feedback on
the nature of the experience these electrical currents would produce.
In one case an area he stimulated caused a man to not only hear a piano being played, but also to
see the man sitting in front of him playing
the piano. In another case a boy reported seeing men sitting on a chair
and singing, and in yet another case the patient heard a complete
orchestra. In each of these situations the individuals involved didn’t
see fleeting shapes of people, or the wisp of a song, but they saw the
image as vivid and clear as if they were actually there in the room.
One woman even heard a song, which turned out to not even have been
one of her favorite songs, being played when an area of her brain was
being stimulated. When stimulated at intervals without her knowledge
(because the brain has no tactile sensation), the same song began
playing again from the exact same spot.
The sound was so clear and flawless that she mistook a device in
the operating room as a musical device that they were stopping and
starting at intervals.
In all cases the patients recalled the events not like you would
commonly recall a memory, which is usually as a fleeting mental image,
but rather in such explicit detail that it was literally like they were
reliving the event in question. Some patients literally saw people in
front of them, and heard them just as clearly as if they were actually
there.
As Dr. Penfield phrased it, it was like the mind was able to “project
a memory or a dream upon the screen of consciousness.” Moreover he
found that when he stimulated the brains of individuals and they
remembered something, an image, or sound, or a feeling, those memories
were always accompanied by the thought processes that accompanied them
at the time. Therefore our brains record sensory data as a whole unit.
Holographic Memory and the Nature of Mind
In my article
the unified field and the illusion of time,
we explored some evidence supporting the understanding that all
information is encoded directly into the field – the energy density of
space/time – all around us (which unfortunately is beyond the scope of
this article). But if we apply that understanding to the perception
going on in this circumstance when Wilder Penfield stimulated the brains
of his patients, what occurred was that his patients seemed to have
perfect recall of past events and in visual cases,
3D or holographic memory.
This is not normal perception.
What if the stimulation of the brain itself caused his patients to project their memory onto the field? Or what if that information was
already present in
a holographic sense meaning that those images, and those songs and
memories were encoded within the field, possibly recording directly into
the field by the brain itself, and the stimulation by chance allowed
them to perceive the memory directly in the field?
This not only suggests the possibility of
holographic memory in human beings, but a very different understanding of memory itself (which we shall explore later).
The other thing that is interesting is that the events which were
brought back were entirely mundane, meaning they were generally ordinary
events of no significance. This suggests that our brains actually
record every detail of our lives, even the mundane and ordinary, and
that they are accessible to us if we could figure out how to access it,
or in other words, how to tap into the full potential of our minds.
Wilder Penfield himself remarked that if the brain was indeed
recording all of experience, then it is only natural that when dipping
into this massive archive of information and memory that we happen upon
ordinary events considering the vast quantity of information recorded in
our lifetime (from
How To Know God by
Deepak Chopra).
In Deepak Chopra’s book
How To Know God,
he also cites how Wilder Penfield noted that the brain even retains
memory while dormant, such as the fact that when patients are under deep
anesthesia during surgery, about one percent of the population has a
recollection of what the doctors were saying, and even some details of
the procedure. It is interesting that…
“Under deep anesthesia, there are practically no higher
brain waves at all, making it impossible for the cerebral cortex to
accomplish anything so complex as remembering what a surgeon is
saying.”(How to Know God, p. 217)
This is one of the reasons why Wilder Penfield concluded after nearly
40 years of research that the mind was an entity separate from the
brain, and which did not rely on the brain to function.
Who Is The One Doing The Moving?
Deepak Chopra in his lecture series with Wayne Dyer entitled
Living Beyond Miracles tells
of another of Wilder Penfield’s experiments where he is stimulating the
motor cortex of a patient’s brain which causes the patient to raise
their arm in front of them. If we were to ask the man if it is
him moving his arm, he would reply that ‘No, I AM not.’
But when Penfield asked him to move his arm to the side the patient
could move his arm, and he responded with something akin to ‘I AM moving
my arm’, or ‘now I AM moving my arm’. Who is this I AM presence who is
doing the moving? And why is it not activated when the body is moving on
its own?
If our brain is the source of who we are, then any stimulation
thereof which resulted in motion should give us the perception that it
is us who is moving, but as
Deepak Chopra
states, because that is not the case this is indicative that our brain
is not who we are, that the brain and body is only superficially related
to who we are, and that the brain most certainly is not the source of
who we are.
Brain Tissue Is Apparently Optional
Removing a hemisphere. Evidence for the holographic brain
concept, and that our brain is only a recorder of experience and not the
source of the mind can be found in a study done by Johns Hopkins
University (J.H.U.) where they worked with brain-damaged children. They
found that they could improve their level of intelligence and physical
coordination by
removing the damaged hemisphere of their brain. In essence, they literally cut out the damaged chunk of the children’s brain.
Within our current understanding of the brain this operation should
significantly damage, if not irreparably hinder the child’s ability for
memory and cognitive functions. From conventional understanding all of
the functions which that hemisphere of the brain took care of would no
longer be implemented leaving the child mentally deficient, or
fragmented in some form.
If memories are stored in the brain, then after this operation those
children should have lost those memories pertaining to the removed
portion of their brain … if memories are stored in the brain. Yet the
results were astonishing, and once again defied conventional thought.
Dr. Eileen P. G. Vining of J.H.U. studied 54 of the children who
underwent the operation and she was simply astounded by the “retention
of memory, and by the retention of the child’s personality and sense of
humour.” A new version of the study was published in 2003 by John
Hopkins University that dealt with 111 kids who had the operation
between 1975 and 2003. Out of these 111 children 86% of them were
seizure free or no longer needed medication (David Wilcock,
The Source Field Investigations).
The mystery of hydrocephalus. For more evidence we move
towards the work of Dr. John Lorber who is one of the world’s top
experts on the condition known as hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus is due to
a problem with the flow cerebral spinal fluid which surrounds and
cushions the brain, and when there is a blockage in this flow the
pressure within the individual’s cranium is increased. Hydrocephalus
means literally “water on the brain,” and brain swelling in this case
leads to an oftentimes dramatic compression of brain tissue.
Dr. Lorber studied a total of 253 people with this condition. In the
most severe cases, the pressure in the brain would increase to such a
high level that the brain tissue would be compacted leaving the patient
with only a fraction of their original amount of brain tissue. In Dr.
Lorber’s study 9 people reached this severity with around only 5% of
their total brain tissue left. That means only 5% of their neurons,
brain cells, synapses, and so one were available in the patient’s brain.
Amazingly 4 out of 9 of those people with less than 5% of their
brain tissue had an IQ over 100, and 2/9 had an IQ greater than 126. In
other words 66.6% of them were fine. Given the drastic loss of brain
tissue the obvious question is how is this possible? How can someone
with almost literally no brain be intelligent at all, let alone above
average?
Dr. Lorber was directed to a student at his university by his peers,
literally based on the intriguingly large size of his head, they thought
he may be of potential interest. This student had an IQ of 126 and had a
“first-class honours degree in mathematics, and is socially completely
normal.”
A brain scan was done on this individual with surprising results. It
was found that out of the normal 4.5 cm of brain tissue, his condition
had been compressed to only a few millimeters. In other words his head
filled with cerebral spinal fluid, and only a few millimeters of brain
tissue, yet he was still high functioning with above average
intelligence (David Wilcock,
The Source Field Investigations).
I have no technical understanding of how this is even possible except
to simply suggest that possibly the conductivity and crystalline nature
of water may be a contributing factor. Yet what this should clearly
illustrate that we know very little of the
true nature of mind, or the brain. Both of these once again demonstrate that the mind is independent of the brain.
The Nature of Mind-Brain Connection
This evidence raises some important questions:
What is the real function of our brains? Is it the brain
tissue itself that creates our intelligence, or is it the electrical and
conductive nature of the brain that allows us to
connect to
intelligence? More or less like a sophisticated antennae, just like
Nikola Tesla observed of himself early in the 20th century.
All of this information so far creates a lot of friction with the
current propagated understanding of the brain, if it doesn’t debunk it
altogether. The information that Penfield discovered is suggesting that
our brains are independent of our minds, and that all our memories are
recorded in their entirety, and with the same detail that we experienced
them. From where we do not yet know.
I also suggest that this is evidence that we have the potential for
holographic memory. This hypothetically is a possible function of our
minds where our memory is projected powerfully onto reality (onto the
screen of the universal consciousness) so that we can experience and
relive our memories in 3D. After all, this is what Wilder Penfield’s
patients experienced.
As Johns Hopkins University, and John Lorber’s research found, it may
not be that our brains are really that important. If children can have
half their brains removed and retain their memories and personality, and
if people can function with less than 5% of their brain tissue with
above average intelligence, then what is the true purpose of the brain
but as a
vehicle for intelligence, not as the source of intelligence?
Like a highly sophisticated bio-technology that we use to experience this level of reality,
create reality, and express ourselves. Like in the movie
Avatar, maybe we are not actually our bodies but are just operating them.
Is our brain really where memories are stored? There is
actually no evidence to support that even our memories are stored in the
brain, and never has there been a memory discovered in the brain. This
is because our brains are constantly changing and are not fixed
structures.
The evidence is finally lining up with ancient spiritual truths from
every culture which expressed explicitly that we are divine, and that
our true nature is
conscious awareness, and that we are merely a fragment of that divine consciousness expressed in physical form.
Conclusion
We may be vastly underestimating the power of our minds, and our true abilities to use them. If
our minds can remember entire songs to perfection or orchestral
performances that we only heard in passing then what is stopping us from
accessing this on a conscious level?
It seems that every single detail of our lives is recorded with our
brain, so the question I have is how do we access that information, and
from where do we access it?
This evidence provides a truly exciting shift in the way we can view
our minds, and more importantly our potential. If an electrode in our
brain is able to stimulate such vivid recollection, is it not possibly
that we can develop our imagination and our mental abilities to this
point naturally so we can use that ability at will?
Is it not possible that there is much more going on during a simple
thought process or recollection of an event than we give ourselves
credit for? That is exactly what Wilder Penfield found which caused him
at the end of his career to see the nature of mind as a field of energy
or information which
Deepak Chopra (I believe) termed the ‘mind-field’.
What if your essence is not in your brain, or in your body, but in a formless field of energy?
About the Author
Brandon West is the creator of
Project Global Awakening.
A website dedicated to the research of a variety of scientific and
spiritual disciplines, and applying that knowledge to help you live an
inspired life and change the world. Follow Project Global Awakening on
Facebook, and
Twitter.
Related:
Exploring Non-local Consciousness
Jim Carrey "The Power of Consciousness"
List of Multiple Discoveries - The Source Field Investigations
Woman of 24 found to have no cerebellum in her brain
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A hole at the back (top) where the cerebellum should be (Top image: Feng Yu et al.; Bottom image: Zephyr/Science Photo Library )
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