CONSCIOUSNESS is confined solely to a single organ inside our heads, at least for most Western thinkers. Our conditioned body language when referencing thought, is pointing to our skulls.
Few native cultures engage in such skulduggery. Native American traditions, for example, always point to the heart.
Undeterred, neuroscientists are busy cataloging the “neural correlates of consciousness” in the skull-brain, and seem determined to prove that our consciousness is somehow created in there between our ears.
In this view, when we die everything disappears forever — including our Soul and ‘I’ consciousness.
It’s the Gut, Stupid
Does your gut have a brain? What does your brain have to do with your gut? Dr. Mark Hyman shares groundbreaking information about our two brains, and offers a simple, step-by-step plan for feeling better about it.
Many Thinkers
Recently it was confirmed that the brains in our head are indeed not unique.
Our gut also has a brain and can think independently, as does the heart, reports Harriet Brown in The New York Times — “A brain in the head, and one in the gut.”
Another study reported at PhysOrg.com suggests that we shouldn’t rely only on conscious memory.
“… we also need to develop our intuitive nature and creativity. Intuition may have an important role in finding answers to all sorts of problems in everyday life …”
“That gut feeling may actually reflect a reliable memory.”
“You know the feeling. You make a decision you’re certain is merely a ‘lucky guess.’
A new study from Northwestern University offers precise electrophysiological evidence that such decisions may sometimes not be guesswork after all.”
Oops! Sorry, it’s the Heart
“One of the early pioneers in neurocardiology, Dr. J. Andrew Armour, introduced the concept of a functional ‘heart brain’ in 1991. His work revealed that the heart has a complex intrinsic nervous system that is sufficiently sophisticated to qualify as a ‘little brain’ in its own right.” (Institute of HeartMath)
“Our physiological systems are interacting in subtle ways and the electromagnetic signal produced by [the] heart,” reports The Institute of Heart Math. This signal, they say, is “registered in the brain waves of people around you.”
(This could explain a lot about the mechanism of thought-transference and related psi phenomenon.)
“The heart’s electromagnetic field is believed to act as a central synchronizing signal within the body,” The Institute reports.
Our Real Being
For non-reductionist scientists, looking for proof that consciousness exists separately from the gray matter of the brain, research is ongoing. This is critical research, and will lead to a science-based spiritual shift.
The shift will undoubtedly prove what Blavatsky wrote:
“The phenomena of human consciousness must be regarded as activities of some other form of Real Being than the moving molecules of the brain.”
There is much still to learn, and there are potential medical applications — though scientists admit to barely scratching the surface, and their heads, over what they are now finding.
Divine Consciousness
Hindu and Tibetan meditators understand whole body consciousness first hand. And, H. P. Blavatsky would agree noting that every cell and organ has a brain of its own.
“Memory has no seat, no special organ of its own in the human brain,” she wrote, but has “seats in every organ of the body” — also pointing out that “the ancient Hindus endowed every cell in the human body with consciousness.”
“It is the function of the physical, lower mind to act upon the physical organs and their cells — but, it is the higher mind alone which can influence the atoms interacting in these cells — which interaction is alone capable of exciting the brain, via the spinal ‘center’ cord, to a mental representation of spiritual ideas far beyond any objects on this material plane.”
“The phenomena of divine consciousness have to be regarded as activities of our mind on another and a higher plane, working through something less substantial than the moving molecules of the brain,” Blavatsky concludes:
“They cannot be explained as the simple resultant of the cerebral physiological processes … [they are only a] form for purposes of concrete manifestation.”
A Spiritual Brain?
All this talk of brain location begs the questions:
