The interface of brain, mind and culture - the interaction between biology, philosophy and culture, with an evolving arc of spiralling
complexities.
Monday 30 June 2008
Correction
In the previous blog delete an extra http:// from the weblink and you should get the webpage displayed -- teething problems!!
2 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Vedic or Vedantic Literature tells us that the human psychology consists of mind which has lot of latent impressions called sangskars. These impressions are the effects of our actions not only of this birth but also of previous births. These impressions have a way of acting on us and our surroundings which some may mistakenly call as fate. If we can effectively control and direct these impressions positively, we can become harmonious personalities.
There are some very basic and crucial differences between the Western and Indian thought. In Indian thought, brain is a biological organ only and it does not have any major role to play as far as the holistic view is concerned. Feelings are given a place not in the brain but in the mind which is a layer beyond the body and the life energy percolating in the body.
To make it short, mind is subtler and beyond the body and the life within the body. Consciousness as ordinarily understood, particularly in western thought, means only the awareness which comes with life. But, consciousness in Indian thought means the intelligent entity which controls the body-mind complex and this consciousness is the ultimate reality, this consciousness is beyond mind, body, the life energy and also beyond another two levels of happiness and intelligence.
So, mind is a completely different and much superior entity than brain.
The consciousness of Indian Philosophy is not the soul, in fact, it is the equivalent of God or the Supreme Being. This Supreme Consciousness manifests itself as individual consciousnesses. This is NOT the mind. The mind lives on and on to be reincarnated in many lives. But, the soul is much superior to the mind. In fact, there is no relation whatsoever of the soul and the physical form. The only relation is that the soul identifies itself with a physical form which identification is mistaken of course.
So, the soul is the manifestation of the Supreme Consciousness or God. This soul wrongly identifies itself with a body-mind complex. Here, the body may die again and again but the mind lives on till all its sangskaras or impressions are wiped off and it remembers its identity with the soul and the Supreme Consciousness
The six stages of consciousness as propagated by Vedanta. Are : 1) Deep sleep: Deep sleep you also have a certain reality. If I scream at you, you will react. You have a degree of awareness, if your child is crying and you are the mother you will immediately respond. Spirit is in state of surveillance even in deep sleep and spirit creates a physiology for that moment.
2) Dreams: Repertoire of experience. Stories are being weaved by the Karmic software and when we are dreaming it is very real. No one can convince us that is was not real. It is only when we wake up we realize that it is not real and it was only a dream. The insight that is not a dream happens only when we wake up from the dream.
3) Vedanta says when you wake up from that dream you enter another dream that is what is called the waking state of consciousness. Presumably you are in that right now. You are in the waking state of consciousness you are participating in it without knowing that it is ephemeral or transitory. That is why you get caught up in the melodrama and the hysteria and the anxiety of the dream . You will remain in it until you wake up from it and get insight that aha! it was an amazing state.
4) You wake up from the “waking state” and when you have the first glimpse of the soul. Walt Whitman said I must not be awake as everything looks to me as it never did before. Else I am awake now and all that occurred before was just a dream. Gautam Buddha said “the lifestyle of ours is as transient as the autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movement of a dance a lifetime is like the flash of lightning in the sky rushing by like a torrent from the steep mountain. Now I am awake (meaning of the word Buddha), waking up from the insubstantial reality and glimpsing into the soul. You can glimpse into the soul. Example turn your attention to who is listening, there is a presence there and it is not your mind. The ever present witnessing awareness is the soul. As you peel the layers even in dreams and even in wakefulness, you see a body out there you can witness it. You can witness it now without experiencing death.
5) Cosmic stage of consciousness. This is the next stage of consciousness.
6) Ever present state of consciousness, where one is completely awake.
Could not agree more with what you've written - clearly a lot of reading has gone into your note. In essence Vedantic philosophy can be mapped onto existing brain systems within the body and the tool it creates - to use western concepts - mind. As the blog on katha upanishad suggests, if one conceptualises the human mind as a bioelectrico-magnetic structure that emits waves (picked up by various gadgets), and conceives this to exist within a much larger and wider and more powerful electro-magnetic field, then the language of vedanta becomes accessible to lay people. The major obstacle to the language used in vedic and other scriptures from ancient past is that they did not have the scientific jargon that we now possess and tried to convey the essence of scientific principles using everyday language. And that causes the most difficulty for the modern man with his over-reliance on western languages and western concepts. In fact it is perhaps unhelpful to categorise things into western or eastern for these concepts have been propounded in wide-ranging ancient literature from Egypt, Scandinacia, Aztec, Maya and Icas to some of the ancient tribal societies. SE the hyperlink attached.
If you imagine a magnet which has physical properties - a spactial orientation. It creates a field that exists way beyond its physical boundaries such that other objects when close enough to the magnet gets attracted to it. The force-field exists beyond the physical boundaries. If this smaller magnet is kept within the field of a much larger magnet, then this magnet is influenced too, and so on.
The brain is like this magnet. It generates a electro-magnetic field. This field extends beyond the physical brain - the mind - that influences things within its force field. One can also equate it with the individual consciousness ( In fact western concept of consciousness has evolved in recent times and does not limit itself to merely being observant although in standard medical practice that is the sense in which the word consciousness is used. I've used it differently in my post - perhaps I ought to have made that clarification).
Vedanta conceives of the mind merely as the intellect - also calling it 'Manas'or sometims more specifically 'chit'and the related 'chetna'. Termonologies aside, for they can often confuse rather than clarify matters, and conceives of the soul as the individuation of that supreme consciousness which i've called 'big' magnet with its associated field force.
The larger magnet is the universal consciosness or cosmic consciousness or supreme consciousness. This has been called God or Godhead or depending on who is doing the writing - if monistic then advaita and nirakar - or if dualistic then dvaita or aakar.
The stages of consciousness that science can demonstrate are the following three broad stages:
!) Sleep, 2) Awake and 3) Dream.
Sleep can be distinguished into Two stages - theta and delta , together called slow-wave sleep.
Awake state can be distinghuished into - alpha and beta rhythm, the former related to a state of relaxed reflective orientation and the latter being attentive concentration.
Dream state is characterised by rapid eye movement with paralysis of all muscles of the body except respiration, heart and eye muscles.
That way science can demonstrate at least 5 states of awareness - two conscious and three unconscious /subconscious.
But then one can in states of deep meditation enter into all of the above states being completely awake and there is now evidence that experienced meditators can enter into a gamma wave state which is a state of heightened compassion and greatest human integration of the mind.
Ultimately vedanta, beyond the ritualistic worshipping, involved an advanced stage of scientific exploration using the human mind and its engagement with a greater force field as the investigating tools. The dense literature that emerged out of these subjective exploration is difficult for science to objectify, in fact impossible, in some instances. As such this blog is an attempt to bring the two ever so closer using terminologies that are easily accessible.
Check out the weblink for deep states of meditation and what it does to the EEG and MRI scans.
2 comments:
Vedic or Vedantic Literature tells us that the human psychology consists of mind which has lot of latent impressions called sangskars. These impressions are the effects of our actions not only of this birth but also of previous births. These impressions have a way of acting on us and our surroundings which some may mistakenly call as fate. If we can effectively control and direct these impressions positively, we can become harmonious personalities.
There are some very basic and crucial differences between the Western and Indian thought. In Indian thought, brain is a biological organ only and it does not have any major role to play as far as the holistic view is concerned. Feelings are given a place not in the brain but in the mind which is a layer beyond the body and the life energy percolating in the body.
To make it short, mind is subtler and beyond the body and the life within the body. Consciousness as ordinarily understood, particularly in western thought, means only the awareness which comes with life. But, consciousness in Indian thought means the intelligent entity which controls the body-mind complex and this consciousness is the ultimate reality, this consciousness is beyond mind, body, the life energy and also beyond another two levels of happiness and intelligence.
So, mind is a completely different and much superior entity than brain.
The consciousness of Indian Philosophy is not the soul, in fact, it is the equivalent of God or the Supreme Being. This Supreme Consciousness manifests itself as individual consciousnesses. This is NOT the mind. The mind lives on and on to be reincarnated in many lives. But, the soul is much superior to the mind. In fact, there is no relation whatsoever of the soul and the physical form. The only relation is that the soul identifies itself with a physical form which identification is mistaken of course.
So, the soul is the manifestation of the Supreme Consciousness or God. This soul wrongly identifies itself with a body-mind complex. Here, the body may die again and again but the mind lives on till all its sangskaras or impressions are wiped off and it remembers its identity with the soul and the Supreme Consciousness
The six stages of consciousness as propagated by Vedanta. Are :
1) Deep sleep: Deep sleep you also have a certain reality. If I scream at you, you will react. You have a degree of awareness, if your child is crying and you are the mother you will immediately respond. Spirit is in state of surveillance even in deep sleep and spirit creates a physiology for that moment.
2) Dreams: Repertoire of experience. Stories are being weaved by the Karmic software and when we are dreaming it is very real. No one can convince us that is was not real. It is only when we wake up we realize that it is not real and it was only a dream. The insight that is not a dream happens only when we wake up from the dream.
3) Vedanta says when you wake up from that dream you enter another dream that is what is called the waking state of consciousness. Presumably you are in that right now. You are in the waking state of consciousness you are participating in it without knowing that it is ephemeral or transitory. That is why you get caught up in the melodrama and the hysteria and the anxiety of the dream . You will remain in it until you wake up from it and get insight that aha! it was an amazing state.
4) You wake up from the “waking state” and when you have the first glimpse of the soul. Walt Whitman said I must not be awake as everything looks to me as it never did before. Else I am awake now and all that occurred before was just a dream. Gautam Buddha said “the lifestyle of ours is as transient as the autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movement of a dance a lifetime is like the flash of lightning in the sky rushing by like a torrent from the steep mountain. Now I am awake (meaning of the word Buddha), waking up from the insubstantial reality and glimpsing into the soul. You can glimpse into the soul. Example turn your attention to who is listening, there is a presence there and it is not your mind. The ever present witnessing awareness is the soul. As you peel the layers even in dreams and even in wakefulness, you see a body out there you can witness it. You can witness it now without experiencing death.
5) Cosmic stage of consciousness. This is the next stage of consciousness.
6) Ever present state of consciousness, where one is completely awake.
Hi Kaku,
Could not agree more with what you've written - clearly a lot of reading has gone into your note. In essence Vedantic philosophy can be mapped onto existing brain systems within the body and the tool it creates - to use western concepts - mind. As the blog on katha upanishad suggests, if one conceptualises the human mind as a bioelectrico-magnetic structure that emits waves (picked up by various gadgets), and conceives this to exist within a much larger and wider and more powerful electro-magnetic field, then the language of vedanta becomes accessible to lay people. The major obstacle to the language used in vedic and other scriptures from ancient past is that they did not have the scientific jargon that we now possess and tried to convey the essence of scientific principles using everyday language. And that causes the most difficulty for the modern man with his over-reliance on western languages and western concepts. In fact it is perhaps unhelpful to categorise things into western or eastern for these concepts have been propounded in wide-ranging ancient literature from Egypt, Scandinacia, Aztec, Maya and Icas to some of the ancient tribal societies. SE the hyperlink attached.
If you imagine a magnet which has physical properties - a spactial orientation. It creates a field that exists way beyond its physical boundaries such that other objects when close enough to the magnet gets attracted to it. The force-field exists beyond the physical boundaries. If this smaller magnet is kept within the field of a much larger magnet, then this magnet is influenced too, and so on.
The brain is like this magnet. It generates a electro-magnetic field. This field extends beyond the physical brain - the mind - that influences things within its force field. One can also equate it with the individual consciousness ( In fact western concept of consciousness has evolved in recent times and does not limit itself to merely being observant although in standard medical practice that is the sense in which the word consciousness is used. I've used it differently in my post - perhaps I ought to have made that clarification).
Vedanta conceives of the mind merely as the intellect - also calling it 'Manas'or sometims more specifically 'chit'and the related 'chetna'. Termonologies aside, for they can often confuse rather than clarify matters, and conceives of the soul as the individuation of that supreme consciousness which i've called 'big' magnet with its associated field force.
The larger magnet is the universal consciosness or cosmic consciousness or supreme consciousness. This has been called God or Godhead or depending on who is doing the writing - if monistic then advaita and nirakar - or if dualistic then dvaita or aakar.
The stages of consciousness that science can demonstrate are the following three broad stages:
!) Sleep, 2) Awake and 3) Dream.
Sleep can be distinguished into Two stages - theta and delta , together called slow-wave sleep.
Awake state can be distinghuished into - alpha and beta rhythm, the former related to a state of relaxed reflective orientation and the latter being attentive concentration.
Dream state is characterised by rapid eye movement with paralysis of all muscles of the body except respiration, heart and eye muscles.
That way science can demonstrate at least 5 states of awareness - two conscious and three unconscious /subconscious.
But then one can in states of deep meditation enter into all of the above states being completely awake and there is now evidence that experienced meditators can enter into a gamma wave state which is a state of heightened compassion and greatest human integration of the mind.
Ultimately vedanta, beyond the ritualistic worshipping, involved an advanced stage of scientific exploration using the human mind and its engagement with a greater force field as the investigating tools. The dense literature that emerged out of these subjective exploration is difficult for science to objectify, in fact impossible, in some instances. As such this blog is an attempt to bring the two ever so closer using terminologies that are easily accessible.
Check out the weblink for deep states of meditation and what it does to the EEG and MRI scans.
Keep writing - its good to read stuff like this.
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