Many textbooks on physiological psychology (neuroscience) begin with the narration of an event that took place in 1848. A man, Phineas Gage, was helping lay Railway tracks in Vermont, USA when a nail he was pounding into the ground flew up and into his head and pierced his brain.  Subsequent to this brain injury, Mr. Gage’s personality changed, radically. Hitherto, he was a sober, Church going moral man known for his good judgment. After the accident, he became a foul mouthed, drunk never do well.  In other words, it seemed that changes in his brain’s integrity changed his personality.

      In the 1860s, in France, Paul Broca began studying the human brain, as it is, not as we think that it should be; that is, he began the study of the brain empirically, objectively and scientifically. His efforts gave rise to what we now call neuroscience (brain science). 
      

         Brain science has come a long way since Broca’s tentative investigations.  The brain has been mapped and we now know what part of the brain controls what part of our actions.  The functions of the various parts of the brain (cerebral cortex, corpus callosum, frontal lobe, thalamus, caudate, hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, brain stem, cerebellum, pineal gland, occipital lobe, parietal lobe etc) are pretty much well described.  We now know that much of our cognitive (thinking) processes take place in the cerebral cortex. We know what parts of the brain control our involuntary activities, such as the beating of our hearts, lungs, response to heat, danger etc.

         The human brain performs a myriad of functions that we are not conscious of, and even those we are conscious of we do not fully understand how the brain performs them.

       The much we know suggests that the brain is composed of over 100 billion neurons (nerve cells). Each nerve cell (neuron) communicates with others through complex electro-chemical movements. Dendrites (of neurons) meet with one another (at their synapses).  Messages pass from one dendrite (neuron) to another.

        The electrical ions inside and outside neurons (calcium ion, magnesium ion, sodium ion, magnesium ion, phosphor ion etc.) coordinate their activities to open and close neurons so as to transmit messages from one neuron to another.

        In addition to the role of electrical activities in the transmission of messages from one nerve cell to another are the activities of certain neurochemicals called neurotransmitters.

         Many neurotransmitters have been identified, such as Dopamine, Serotonin, Acetylcholine, Norepinephrine, GABA, Endorphin, and so on. These neurotransmitters play key roles in the transmission of messages from one nerve to another and, additionally, affect thinking and emotions. 

       For example, dopamine has been implicated in psychosis (disordered thinking, including delusions and hallucinations).  Apparently, psychotics seem to have defective dopamine receptors (where, upon release, that neurochemical is stored). It seems that somehow psychotics, particularly schizophrenics, tend to have a lot more dopamine than is normal in the brain. This excess dopamine, apparently, is correlated with such psychotic symptoms as hallucinations and delusions.

      Neuroleptic medications, such as Zyprexa, Risperdal, Senequan, Geodom etc., apparently, reduce the level of dopamine in the brain and in the process reduce psychotic symptoms, though they do not heal psychosis. A few weeks on these psychotropic medications, psychiatric patients are released from psychiatric hospital and are able to live, semi independently, in the community, whereas in the past they spent most of their lives in insane asylums (and or roaming the streets).

         But like every thing good there is bad in neuroleptic medications. Having reduced dopamine and psychotic symptoms, they generate the symptoms of those diseases that ensue from the deficiency of dopamine, such as Parkinson and its tremors, and have to be treated with anti Parkinson medications (such as cogentine etc).

          Those who take stimulant drugs, such as cocaine and amphetamine, apparently, compel their brains to release additional dopamine.  Initially, elevated dopamine gives these drug takers a feeling of well being, but, ultimately, generates psychotic thinking and behaviors in them.  Persons on high doses of cocaine have been know to hallucinate and feel paranoid to the point that they hide from imaginary enemies, are suspicious, guarded and to escape from imaginary assailants jump out of their houses windows and either injure or kill themselves.
      
         Apparently, in depression there is less serotonin in the brain.  For any number of reasons, depressed persons seem unable to retain this “happy chemical” (neurotransmitter) in their brains. Medications that block the re-uptake of serotonin (into its neuro-receptors, hence increase its presence in the brain) have revolutionalized the treatment of major depression. After about two to three weeks on these anti depressant medications (such as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil etc), clinically depressed persons become lively and buoyant. Anti depressant medications have done wonders for depressed persons.

          In the past, depressed patients used to go to psychoanalysts and processed their entire lives stories with their analysts, with the hope of figuring out what made them depressed, to no avail. Thirty years of psychoanalysis was not known to have healed one depressed person! But a few weeks on antidepressant medications, the depressed person no longer feels that life is not worth living, and regains interests in the activities of daily living (work, sports, food, sex, personal grooming, and has energy to go out and do what life demands from all of us to live it).

       Persons with bipolar affective disorder (alternating depression and mania) are increasingly stabilized with anti manic medications (such as Lithium, Depakote and Tegretol).

        Medications also are increasingly healing anxiety disorders (neurosis). Apparently, in anxiety the brain somehow is deficient in either the production or retention of certain inhibitory neurotransmitters (GABA, Endorphin, for example) or is over active in the production and retention of certain excitatory neurotransmitters (such as Acetylcholine, Norepinephrine).

        Anxiolytic medications (such as Valium, Librium, Xanax), apparently, work on certain neurotransmitter receptors and enable them to either release more inhibitory neurotransmitters or reduce certain excitatory neurotransmitters. The net effect is the feeling of less anxiety in hitherto anxious persons.

         Thirty years of psychoanalysis did not heal one anxious, neurotic person but after a few weeks of pharmacological intervention, anxious persons claim reduction of their anxiety levels.

        Persons prone to intemperate anger are treated with medications and these medications seem to reduce their propensity to temper tantrums. Ativan, for example, is known to reduce the state of somatic arousal in anger (and anxiety) and help anger prone persons to calmly process what ordinarily would have made them angry.

         Even such seemingly culture induced affects as shame, guilt and fear can be altered by the ingestation of appropriate medications. Disordered human thinking and emotional systems are amenable to medicinal interventions.

         There is no denying the fact that the medications employed in treating persons with psychological disorders do work; and that they seem to work where other psychological interventions do not. This may seem like a simple matter, but it raises a philosophical question; it proposes to change our view of human nature.

        Is the human brain, a physical (material) thing, all there is to human thinking and feelings?  The real question is: is man only matter?

         We know that in organic mental disorders we can correlate damage (lesion) to the brain with changed thinking and behaving patterns. A hitherto gifted student who was involved in an accident and suffered brain injury became a moron.  In other words, was his hitherto high IQ (over 132) strictly biological in nature, since an injury to his brain reduced his IQ to less than 70 (the benchmark for mental retardation)?

       Those involved in accidents that affected their brains undergo radical change in their personalities (organic personality disorders), from being calm to excitable persons with poor judgments; from controlled anger to uncontrolled anger etc.  So, is personality a product of brain chemistry? If so, what about all that talk about culture and religion’s influence on the human personality?

       In philosophy is the age old debate between materialism and idealism. Material monism posits that human beings are animals and that their thinking, their so-called mind, is epiphenomenal; that is, is a product of the configurations of particles, atoms and elements in their brains.  Man is part of matter, period. He is nothing more than matter. His so-called consciousness, his sense of self is a product of the permutations of electrical and chemical processes in his brain. If in doubt, give him drugs that alter his brain chemistry and he looses his consciousness. Before surgery, patients are anaesthetized and do not have consciousness during the period of operation; so where did their consciousness, their sense of self, go to during such periods?

         Accidents produced particles (quarks, neutrons, protons, electrons etc), atoms and elements and further accidents produced the mixture of these elements into molecules, and they eventually evolved and, over time (the earth has been around for four billion years?) evolved into animals who think, feel and behave as we do. We are the products of accidental evolution.

         Charles Darwin (Origin of Species) believes that human beings are nothing more than glorified apes foraging for food and mutating and adapting to changes in their environment, with those who did not adapt dying off.

         Whereas in his Ethics, Spinoza had seen human beings as capable of making judgments to serve social interests, life on earth is a struggle for the survival of the fittest, Herbert Spencer writes in his Ethics for the new age. (Alas, the human sense of self, the ego and its pride would like to believe that they are more than monkeys in business suits.)

       Neuroscience, obviously, reinforces the contentions of materialism. (David Hume, a Scottish logical positivist, would be glad to dispense with the contention that there is more to man than his physical brain; neuroscience has finally enabled him to dismantle Berkeley’s idealism.)

         On the other hand, is the view that man is more than his body (in this case, his physical brain)? Rene Descartes argued for dualism.  In his view (I think, therefore, I am; cogito ergo sum), man has a dual nature, matter and mind.  Man is a thinking creature. His ability to think transcends his biological nature. In other words, there is a spiritual aspect to human beings.

        The generality of humanity would seem to believe that man has a dual nature, a physical and a spiritual nature.

        (The belief that man is more than his body is referred to as idealism; extreme idealistic monism denies physics and emphasizes spirit. George Berkeley, for example, sees the entire world as a dream in our minds, solipsism. Berkeley’s extreme idealism is not shared by other idealistic philosophers. These would be content with the notion that, somehow, our thinking affects the physical environment and that we are not just the product of the physical world. German idealistic philosophers, such as Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche etc believe that the world is changed by human beings thoughts; that thinking is primary, as opposed to environmental determinism of human beings. The French idealist, Blasé Pascal believed that we are spiritual beings and that the existence of God is true.)

        Clearly, the thrust of neuroscience is that human thinking, emotions and even consciousness are produced by the nature of the human brain (the nervous system).  Neuroscience is thus changing the definition of what it means to be a human being.

       If the assumptions of neuroscience are correct, all the talk about God, spirits, heaven and hell are hocus pocus.  Human beings are like other animals; they do what they do as a result of their bodies programming, which is a result of their evolution on this planet, and, therefore, when they die they end with their bodies.

         (Studies of the phenomenon known as near death experience, a phenomenon which would seem to support the idea of our existence outside matter, show that certain chemical alterations take place in the brains of people who are near death, and that all the claims these people make regarding going through a dark tunnel, entering a place of light and seeing their dead ancestors etc are biological in origin. The brain can be biochemically induced to have such experiences. That is to say that there is no such thing as after death world.) 

        Believing in the conclusions of neuroscience, the evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins recently penned a book, The God Delusion, claiming that the belief in God is a mental illness, a delusional disorder, a belief in that which is not true as true. As he sees it, human beings have to be healed of the God Delusion, their making up what does not exist, God, and believing in it.  The idea of God is an absurd story we made up and we ought to get rid of that story and face the truth that we are the product of matter, Mr. Dawkins, argues.

        Before Dawkins, Sigmund Freud (The Future of an Illusion) had argued that the belief in God, and religion, is a neurosis.

        Eric Fromm considered religion group neurosis while seeing what ordinarily is called neurosis a personal religion.

        As a rational secular humanist, Alfred Adler saw no need for the hypothesis of God; as he sees it, we can train people to devote their lives to serving social interests and that is the only way to obtain a feeling of meaning, purpose, worth and value in our (as existentialists, such as Sartre, Camus, Jasper, Heidegger claim) otherwise meaningless existence.

       Simply stated, neuroscience is nullifying religion and spirituality. On the other hand, human beings like to see themselves as spiritual beings but neuroscience tells them that such self perception is wrong. 

        The question is whether human beings self perception that they are more than their bodies is psychotic, as Professor Dawkins contended?

           As an empiricist, I cannot deny the evidence that neuroscience shows me. I have witnessed changes in the human brain and their effects on human thinking, feeling and behavior. On the other hand, I am convinced that man is more than his brain. While recognizing the conclusions of neuroscience, I make an argument for a non physical consciousness interacting with the human brain.

RELIGION AND CONSCIOUSNESS, AKA GOD

         The subject of this paper is the interface of the brain and consciousness, not religion. But since to understand consciousness it is necessary to talk about religion, and religions’ gods I decided to make some comments on them.

       The major religions of the world are Judaism, Christianity, Islam; Hinduism and Buddhism. Let us briefly see how these essentially Asian religions construed God. (What religions call God, I call consciousness; I, therefore, interchange the terms god and consciousness.) (Apparently, the Asians define God for us and Europeans define science or us. Where do Africans come into the picture?)

       Judaism, Christianity and Islam are Semitic religions; they were founded by essentially the same people, people living in the Arab world. (The Jews are a variant of Arabs; both Jew and Arab speak related languages and have the same middle-eastern world view.)

         The three religions of the Semitic race do not bother to explain God but merely posit the existence of one God and ask their followers to accept his existence on blind faith. 

        In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, no attempt is made to be rational, to persuade the individual to believe the hypothesis that God exists; it is simply assumed that he should accept such a proposition on trust.  Essentially, these religions are irrational religions.  At best, they could be considered metaphysical poems on the possible existence of a non-physical reality. They do not appeal to persons with rational, philosophical turn of minds. To the scientist, they are gibberish, really.

        Judaism’s (and, by default, Christianity’s) Genesis, stated, without proof, that in the beginning was God. God created the world.  What that God is was not explained. Is he a person like us? Is he an impersonal force?

          The Bible’s God sometimes acts like psychotics in psychiatric hospitals; his sense of specialness and consequent anger at those who do not recognize and respect his presumed importance would make him a chap with pathological narcissism. If what the old Testament portion of the Bible calls God were a human being, most mental health professionals would involuntarily commit him to psychiatric  hospitals and fill his body up with neuroleptic medications to see if he could be made a reasonable human being.

        Christianity accepted Judaism’s postulation that there is a monotheistic God and did not make any effort to explain him.  It is interesting that the compilers of the bible saw it fit to combine the Old Testament and the New Testament gods since they are different. The God of Moses was an angry god who punished whoever disobeyed his whim. The God of Jesus Christ, on the other hand, was a loving and forgiving God. The entire gospel of Jesus Christ can be summarized as love and that forgiveness is the true meaning of love; we forgive the wrongs done by those we love. One would think that the two approaches to God were so radically different that they ought not to be in the same book? Perhaps, the Church fathers wanted to give historical continuity to their religion hence they linked it to the Old Testament? Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism (just as Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism).

       Assuming that God exists, the founder of Christianity, Jesus proceeded to preach a moral gospel of love and forgiveness. Jesus was a powerful moral preacher but certainly did not prove the existence of God, nor did he make an effort in that regard. (See Thomas Jefferson’s Bible.)

        Simply stated, Judaism and Christianity did not prove the existence of God, nor did they attempt to do so.

       I am aware of Christian theology, in fact, I have studied it but it was largely undertaken by non-Middle Easterners, by occidental minds trying to make an oriental poem seem reasonable. Even then, Christian theology failed in trying to marry Greece and Arabia. Thomas Aquinas (Sumna Theologica) efforts to use Aristotelian logic to prove the existence of God does not persuade any one. You either accept Christianity on faith or you don’t; you do not have the delusion that you are accepting it on rational, scientific grounds.  I will, therefore, disregard European Christian theology.

        Islam is essentially like Judaism and Christianity. In 610, the founder of Islam, Mohammed (570-622) began hearing voices talking to him, voices he claimed were from the angel Gabriel. (Do angels exist? Where is the proof?  Were those voices hallucinations? How do we know the difference?) 

         The Koran is the compilation of what Mohammed’s private voice told him is from the angel Gabriel (and, ultimately, from God).

         Mohammed assumed the existence of God without demonstrating its reality. For all intents and purposes, Islam does not intend to persuade any one to believe in its idea of God but merely asks the individual to accept it on faith. ( The non-believer, an infidel, the individual is game for killing by radical Muslims on a jihad to convert the world to Islam and re-establish an Islamic Caliphate, a theocracy that rules the world from Mecca. Arabs and their religion are on ego power quest to convert the world to their religion and to dominate the world.)

         We can safely dismiss the Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as irrational religions. These religions tell us nothing important about God. Western theologians’ attempts to make these essentially irrational poems on God seem rational beg the point. St Augustine, Origin, Tertullian, Athanasius, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, Anselem, Erasmus, Martin Luther, Calvin, Thomas Kung, Thomas Merton etc were projecting European thinking to Arab religion and they did not help matters at all.

      India produced two religions that made some attempts to explain what they meant by God.

         Hinduism teaches that God is an impersonal force that manifests in everything in the universe. One force, Brahmin, is everything in the universe. Brahman, in his true state, is not known to us, but in his manifest state is the material universe.

         Hinduism sees the temporal universal as an illusion, a mirage that does not, in fact, exist. According to the foremost philosopher of non-dual Advaita, Vedanta, the Jnana (Yogi) Sankaracharya, the world is a dream and the dreamer is Brahman himself.

         One God, as it were, cast a spell/magic, charm (Maya) on himself and went to sleep and in his sleep dreams that he is many. Everything in the material universe is an aspect of God’s dream.

        God in his true essence is spirit, creative, loving, infinite, changeless and permanent, but in his dream state is the opposite of those attributes: changeable, impermanent, transitory, ephemeral, finite and destructive.

       According to Hinduism, human beings’ true essence, Atman, is the same as Brahman.  But in the dream, the world, the Atman (individual’s soul) sees itself as separated from the universal soul (Brahman).

          As long as we see ourselves as separated from God and from each other, we are caught in the dream of the world. We are living in an illusion. We are deluded in the sense that we believe what is not true (separated self, ego) as true; we are also hallucinating in the sense that we talk to people that are not real. The world is a psychosis and we are all insane.

       Truth is the union of all being; lies are the beliefs in separation.  The individual is forgetful of his true identity, unified state hence is said to live in ignorance. As long as a person believes himself separated from God and from other people, Hinduism teaches that he is ignorant of his truth: union with all being. 

      The power of Maya, however, is very strong and not to be trifled with. It is a magical portion that makes us forget our true unified self and identify with a false ego separated self. This charm is too powerful and only few can dispel it. People on earth are charmed, are under a magical spell hence take a meaningless, purposeless life as meaningful and purposeful; they take their worthless bodies, food for worms, as worthwhile; they devote their lives working like slaves to provide for their bodies, bodies that are food being prepared for worms. It is insane to take nothingness as something important and seek it. (Have you observed the well adjusted American seeking material things, working many hours in pursuit of it all? In his sixties nature does him a favor and gives him a heart attack and or stroke and he is put out of his misery. Seriously, you ask: why is he seeking nothing and taking it as something important?  Does he not have the brains to know the difference?  You wonder if he has arrested intellectual development, whether he is forever a child, not an adult.  The American is a study in infants in adult bodies. Can’t they see that life in body is nothing? And this is not some sort of major depression. Indeed, when the American begins to think, real existential thinking, his superficial culture and its childish psychiatrists tell him that he is depressed and his already bloated body is pumped full of antidepressants, whose adverse effects damage some of his internal organs and eventually kill him. These over fed animals must learn think, for nature gave human beings the ability to think.)

        Hinduism believes that a powerful spell must have been cast on people to prevent them from recognizing the futility of their existence on earth. Worse, they take their separated ego selves, the human personality, as important when, as Buddha said, it is a mere puff of smoke, that which does not even exist, or seem to exist only as in a dream state. Pure reason would lead one to give up this world, Hinduism says. But we are prevented from reasoning by a powerful charm, Maya. We take nothingness as something important and even fight for it. The world is insane, and at bests a child’s play. Give it up and return home to Brahman and his home, Brahmaloka, Hinduism teach.

       Enlightenment is the awareness of ones union with all being, and living as such.

       The purpose of Hindu religion is to enable the individual to break through the ignorance of his true self, unified self, (to over come real self forgetfulness). “Thou art that”, one is one with Brahman and all his manifestations. 

       To attain the truth of his being, the individual is encouraged to meditate (Raja yoga) and in meditation tune out the separated self and its thinking and experience Moksha (break out from the ego and its world) and enter Samadhi (oneness with God). 

        In Samadhi, the individual looses consciousness of the separated “I consciousness” and regains the “we consciousness”. In that unified self consciousness, he is said to be enlightened to his true self and thenceforth is an illuminated soul (such as Gautama Buddha).

      When one is enlightened to ones true self, unified self, one either stays in it (in which case ones body dies) or one returns to aspects of separated consciousness, our world, and becomes a teacher of union, who is a teacher of God and teacher of love and forgiveness.

         To return to our world, the enlightened person takes on the ego, once more, but now, the ego of love and the ego of knowledge, and uses it to teach other egos, separated selves, people, about the illusory nature of the ego and help them do what they have to do to regain the consciousness of unified consciousness.

         To Hinduism there is something called unified consciousness (Brahman, God) and all of us are part of it.  At some point, we undertook to separate from that unified consciousness and now have separated consciousness.

         The separated self, the “I consciousness”, is said to be false and the unified “we consciousness” is said to be true.

        Hinduism aims at enabling people to extinguish their separated self consciousness and regaining the awareness of their unified self consciousness. In unified self consciousness is said to be peace, happiness and joy.

         Gautama Buddha was a Hindu who claimed to have attained the “we consciousness”, to have escaped from separated self consciousness (the ego self) and attained the unified we consciousness. The "we consciousness" is called the real self, whereas the separated consciousness, our present state of consciousness, is called the false self.

       Buddha called this experience of union Nirvana.  (Hinduism calls it Samadhi and Zen calls it Satori.) 

         Buddha teaches that to attain unified self consciousness we must let go of our separated consciousness.

        The individual must consciously deny that he is the separated ego self and empty his thinking of all separated self concepts. He must silence all ego conceptual thinking and remain quiet.  His mind must be emptied of all ego separated categories, all sense of I, and the world of separation, our empirical world. The mind, as it were, should be empty, a void, with no known self in it.

         In a mind swept clean of all conceptual thinking, the individual experiences his real self, the unified spirit self.

        That unified spirit self, Buddha said, cannot be explained or understood with our ego based thinking; for ego thinking is separated thinking and it cannot understand unified thinking; thus Buddha refused any question asking him to explain nirvana (God state).

         Both Hinduism and Buddhism teach that in unified spirit self there is no you and I, no seer and seen, no subject and object, and that all are one literal self.

         Having experienced union with all existence, become enlightened and illuminated to his/our real self, Buddha proceeded to teach that as long as human beings desire to have separated selves and identify with them that they are in this world, a dream, an illusion; and that they would suffer.

       Suffering, Buddha said, 2500 hundred years ago, is rooted in our desire to be separated selves, egos, and doing what makes the ego and the body that houses it seem to survive.

       To overcome suffering, we must give up the desire to have separated selves. We must give up our attachments to the "I consciousness" and its world, our separated world, and return to the truth of the unified world. (Matter separates, so the unified world is not material, is, if you like, spiritual.)

       In the unified state, the opposite of our separated state, all things are unified, and they are in harmony. The world of union is the world of peace and happiness.
         For things to be unified they must be the same and equal. The world of unified spirit is the world of sameness and equality, a world of permanency, changelessness, and knowledge.

       In our present world, there are differences and inequality hence conflict exists in it. We must return to the unified spirit world of sameness and equality and experience its peace and happiness, Hinduism and Buddhism teaches.

       Hinduism and Buddhism teach their adherents to meditate and in meditation extinguish their separated self consciousness so as to attain unified (no separated ego self) consciousness.

DISCUSSION

         Religions are not based on rational parameters, whereas science is. Religions make certain assumptions and without proving them merely ask folks to accept them on faith. Hinduism made the most valiant effort to inject some reasoning into its religious categories.

        Apparently, out of fear of death, human beings are willing to accept the irrational postulations of religion.

        Science does not ask any one to accept anything on faith.  The scientific method asks people to accept only what is self evidently true, what they can see and or verify. A hypothesis about the nature of a thing is exactly that, a guess. It is those hypotheses that can be demonstrated as true in the empirical world that science accepts as scientific propositions, until they are demonstrated as false, so said Karl Popper.

      Neuroscience is a science. Any of us can perform a little experiment and verify the conclusions of neuroscience. Cut open the human brain, study it and you come to the conclusions of neuroscience. You do not have to believe neuroscience; you have to verify it before you accept it.

       No one doubts the truth of certain conclusions reached by neuroscience.  The question is whether those conclusions say all there is to say about human beings, or are human beings more than their brains?

THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

         In the last section I talked about religions God (philosophers’ consciousness). I did so not because religion proves the existence of God; but as segue to the discussion on consciousness.

        What is consciousness?  There is no universally accepted definition of consciousness. However, many people take it to mean human beings awareness of their individuality, their awareness of their selves as separated and apart from other people and from the world.

        Generally, it is believed that other animals, at best, have species (group) consciousness but not individuated consciousness. A dog probably identifies with other dogs but does not think of itself as apart from other dogs?  It is human beings (and, perhaps, some of the higher apes, such as chimpanzees) that have separated self consciousness.

        Within human beings the level of self consciousness is different in people. The normal person’s self consciousness is slightly above that of animals, that is, species (group) level but not by much. It is the so-called neurotic that has optimal self consciousness. (Whereas the neurotic seeks maximal separated self hence lives in tension and conflict, the mystic extinguishes his separated self consciousness, his ego, Hindu Ahamkara,  in unified consciousness, and in doing so regain eternal peace and joy. The egotist lives in conflict, the mystic lives in bliss.)

         The neurotic feels totally individuated and separated from other people and from existence. He feels all alone in the wide universe. He does not feel like he belongs to any groups (his family, clan, tribe, nation, humanity etc). He is man alone.  It is this aloneness that hunts him and makes him do some of the things he does. He feels inordinate anxiety (primordial anxiety from the sense of separateness).  He lives in total fear and seeks ways to wriggle back to the group, to where normal human beings are, and where animals are. Alas, no matter how much he tries he cannot extinguish his sense of aloneness and return to group sleep-dream, animal unconscious existence. (Animals unconscious existence is in contradistinction from the mystic’s merging of his self in universal consciousness, where, though, he loses awareness of his separated self he gains the awareness of collective consciousness; the self does not die in universal consciousness but is expanded to include all selves.)

         The neurotic is fully human and has no place to go but to return to where human beings came from, unified consciousness aka God. As long as people seek separated consciousness they will experience conflict (the tension arising from the real and false selves, the unified and separated selves).

          The normal person is yet to become a true human being, to be given birth to the tragedy of being human, aloneness; the normal person is sheltered from primordial anxiety by his sense of connectedness and belonging to his group.

          Clearly, biological factors play a role in the development of extreme self consciousness.  Neurotics are born neurotic, not made; normal persons and their limited intelligence and awareness of the human condition are born that way and remain that way throughout their lives (unless you can change their genetic structure and open them up to real thinking, the type found in introspective, reflective shy neurotic persons.) 

          The normal person is only slightly higher than animals in evolution but not fully human, yet. And that is as well for if normal persons were fully human and appreciated the meaninglessness and purposelessness of being they would commit mass suicide; it is as well that they remain like sleeping-dreaming animals and take that which is disgusting to neurotics as interesting: enjoyment of sensual pleasures, for example.

      At this very moment scientists are busy studying the various parts of the brain, some are mapping the brain’s functions; others are trying to understand how the brain produces thinking and emotions and yet others trying to locate the sit of consciousness.

       Rene Descartes thought that the Pineal gland was the sit of consciousness, the area of the brain where spirit interfaced with matter. He was wrong. Other neurologists have indicated that, perhaps, since the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain responsible for much of human beings cognitive functions that it is the sit of consciousness. They are wrong. So far, no one has located a specific part of the human brain responsible for human consciousness.

MY THESIS

           Brain scientists will not locate a specific part of the brain responsible for consciousness.

          Consciousness is apart from the brain but uses the entire brain and the entire human body to operate on earth.

        From the scientific perspective, consciousness does not emanate from outside the brain, from so-called spirit, but from the brain itself.  In other words, the dance of the various neurons (electro-chemicals) somehow produce the human sense of I, the separated self that perpetually sees its life endangered and defends it.

         (All of human activity is really defense of the separated self, observed the astute American metaphysical psychologist, Helen Schucman. See her metaphysical cum psychological poem, A Course in miracles.)

        Even though it is clear to one that consciousness does not emanate from the brain, it is necessary that scientists search for it in the brain continue, unabated; their fooling around in the brain enables us to understand the brain more fully. We do not need to truncate that understanding. We need to understand the final frontier of our physical existence, our brain.

      The human brain is, perhaps, the most complex machine constructed by the universe.

        We do not need to cut short the scientific inquiry into the nature of the brain and consciousness because of misguided religion’s insistence that we believe in its unproven hypothesis that there is spirit.

        Religion has a way of stifling the search for knowledge, and for setting mankind back, relegating it to belief in nonsense as the truth. For thousands of years, human beings lived in ignorance; when they were sick they prayed to non-existent gods.  The gods of their imaginations (we invented god in our human image and turned around to say that God created us in his image…if God exists, he is formless spirit; spirit does not have images) did not heal them, they suffered and died.

         It was only when some human beings accepted Francis Bacon’s scientific method and studied phenomena on its own terms, without reference to so-called gods that we began to improve the human condition. In the four hundred years since mankind gradually accepted the scientific method, look at what they have learned and accomplished.

        In the past, people died young from assorted diseases. (Ramakrishna’s died at fifty, from throat cancer; apparently, his mother god, kali, did not prevent him from having cancer, see M the Gospel of Ramakrishna. Helen Schucman died from pancreatic cancer, apparently, the god that she said that she labored for in writing her book did not reward her with a more peaceful  and graceful death.)

        If left unobstructed, science would improve human life span to, at least 120 years, by the end of this century. So, I say, onward science soldiers (not Christian soldiers or Islam’s solders). We have to use knowledge to conquer the world, and transform the human culture into a scientific culture and drive out all religious superstitions.

        The Bible, Koran, Veda etc will join Homer’s Odyssey and Illiad and Virgil’s Aeneid as books on ancient mythologies. They have held mankind back long enough and it is time to set them aside and move on to the search of truth in a scientific manner.

 UNIVERSAL INTELLIGENCE, A CONJECTURE

          Is consciousness a product of our brains, a physical phenomenon, only?  If so, how did consciousness come to be and have the need to understand itself? 

       I have a need to understand human beings (physiology, psychology etc).  How did that need/desire arise?  How did matter produce the desire to study itself? 

       Clearly, matter affects consciousness, but to say that matter produced consciousness is to beg the question.

        Epiphenomenalism is another form of religion, this time, the religion of science, with scientists acting as its high priests and their unfounded pronouncements accepted on blind faith, as religionists accept on blind faith the gibberish propounded by so-called ministers of god.

       It seems to me that belief in God and life after death is mostly predicated on fear of death. Fear of death disposes human beings to accept the rubbish found in the various religions of mankind.  Therefore a serious consideration of consciousness can only be embarked on by those who do not fear death. If you can look death in the face and say, I do not fear you, I do not mind oblivion and finitude as my fate, you are ready for philosophy. As long as your life is driven by fear you are not ready for philosophy, you are only capable of religion. As Sigmund Freud pointed out in the Future of an Illusion, religion is the abode of terrified children seeking a powerful father figure to protect them from the vicissitudes of living on planet earth.

         I do not fear death.  If death is the end of our existence, that is fine with me. I consider it cowardly for people to believe in God because they are afraid of finitude and want to live forever and ever. I particularly loathe those who fear going to hell and desire to go to heaven.  We do not know that heaven and hell exist; therefore, to fear hell seems absurd. 

         As far as I can see, oblivion is preferable to living in the impoverished conditions many people live in this world.

      My motivation in trying to understand consciousness is not fear (of death) or such rubbish but curiosity. I am intrigued that in a seeming chaotic, meaningless, purposeless, worthless and valueless universe, human beings have consciousness.

         The mystery of the universe is that it produced consciousness, a consciousness that can study the universe.  (Albert Einstein observed another mystery: that the universe can be understood by human beings.) 

         Looking at the absurdities of the universe, such as produce human beings only to have them die and become food for worms, it would seem better if consciousness did not exist in the universe.  Why have the ability to understand the universe’s insanity? What is the point?    

         We are born; we grow, pursue meaningless and purposeless goals and eventually die. Our bodies are food for worms.

      Our egos are chimera; they are here today and are gone tomorrow. As existentialist writers correctly observed, our lives are meaningless and purposeless, though given pseudo meaning and purpose by our efforts to understand the universe, physically and psychologically. As Arthur Schopenhauer noted, man seems a mistake that ought not to have been made; we ought not to exist, for we exist for nothing. Consider that the expanding universe would, sooner or later, either re-collapse into itself and end everything or expand for ever, loose heath, become too cold to support life and every thing dies (the big chill). What is the point to it producing life in the first place? Why produce life only to extinguish it? It is absurd.

        Why did the universe produce a conscious creature, a creature that, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet observed, in his intelligence is like the gods (who are our creation) yet is food for worms! People live to suffer. As we used to say during my teenage years: life is pain and then you die. What a bizarre universe!

       Only an insane intelligence could have produced such a weird universe; sane intelligence would not have created this world; why create it, what is it for? Silence!

        Existential philosophy notwithstanding, there is the question of consciousness. Is consciousness the product of the concatenation of accidental particles, atoms and elements, only? 

         Without beating around the bush, here is what I think, my speculation. I have no proof for my stance but it makes sense to me (to my five senses and more).

         I think that consciousness is not rooted in matter.  I think that there is a conscious aspect of the universe.  I do not know how it works. And I do not have a need to attribute its working to the gods of my invention; I do not worship imaginary gods.

        Though I do not understand the nature of consciousness, I am inclined to approach it along Hindu (Vedanta) categories. I am fully aware that Hinduism, like all religions, is metaphorical representation of reality and not the reality it is trying to represent. Mental constructs and models of reality are not the reality they are trying to understand. What reality is, I do not know.

         I think that there is consciousness that is the same everywhere in the universe. That consciousness has no sense of I and you; it knows itself as one.  It is the same and equal everywhere it is.  It is all knowing, eternal, changeless and permanent. It is not a person; it is impersonal and probably does not know of our ego, separated personal existence!

       To say one immediately implies two.  You cannot conceptualize one without conceptualizing two.  One thing presupposes two things.

        The one consciousness is, therefore, simultaneously one and infinite in numbers. If you like to call it spirit:  spirit is one and many. And if you insist on anthropomorphizing it, there is one self who is infinite selves; one mind that is infinite minds; one thinker thinking through infinite units of thinking.

       I think that in its actuality that the one self knows itself to be infinite in numbers but knows all its infinite parts as itself. 

TRANSCENDENT AND IMMANENT CONSCOUSNESS

         Somehow, the various seeming parts of the Self seem to have become separated from each other. They have not separated from each other; they remain joined, connected and unified; they merely believe that they have become separated and what they believe in and behave as if it is real, seem real to them.

       Our empirical world seems to be the place where that which is one consciousness, if you like, one self, seems to be separated into infinite consciousness, infinite selves.

         On earth, each person fancies himself separated from other people, from animals and from trees. But in truth each self is the same as other selves.

       (Unified consciousness, unified self, which, by logical necessity, must be non-material, for matter separates, is the transcendent self, whereas separated consciousness, the separated self, the empirical, earthly self is the immanent consciousness/ self.)

       In Hindu categories, one self, as it were, cast a powerful charm, Maya, on a part of itself, and that part goes to sleep and dreams that it is our seeming infinite selves.  The many selves on earth are illusions, dream selves, dream figures (and, at best, temporary selves).

         The seeming separated selves: human beings, animals, trees etc die and disappear from existence but what exists forever and ever is the one unified self, the one consciousness that produced them in its dream that separation is possible in its eternal union. We are dream figures, not real selves.

          This does not mean that we should negate this world and escape from it, as some Hindus propose to do.  We are here and ought to make the most of it. We ought to study this world as scientifically as we could and device technology to adapt to it.

        I believe that in the future, science and technology would make it possible for people to live healthier lives.

        Genetic science and genetic engineering would make it possible for us to understand how our bodies are put together and engineer out defective genes and replace them with healthy genes.

        To me, it seems that life on earth is a dream, a bad dream, a nightmare; we ought to transform this nightmarish dream into a happy dream. 

        Love all our fellow dreamers. Forgive those who harmed us, as much as it is possible to forgive them. (Sometimes, you have to fight those who are bent on harming and or killing you. For example, the West must fight the advocates of Islam and prevent them from converting mankind to their feudal, theocratic social structure.)

        I think that the human body is like an automobile, a car. Somebody is driving that car.  Who that somebody is, I do not know. 

        It is self evident that the state of a car affects how well it runs. If a car is rickety or old it does not run well despite the intentions of the driver to make it run well.

         By this analogy, if the human body (brain) is disordered and or old it does not perform well for the human beings trying to live through them. If the brain is not healthy it does not permit its owner, its driver to make much through it.

       We must, therefore, understand the body’s mechanics and improve it, so that it enables us to do the work we are doing with it and for as long as we live on planet earth.

         I think that there is intelligence at work in the universe, albeit a weird, insane intelligence that constructed our bodies and everything in the universe and lives (dreams) through them. That intelligence is not our bodies and the other material agents that it lives in, just as we are not the cars we made or the computers we built.

         I do not propose to explain the nature of that universal intelligence, for I do not understand it.  Nor do I think that any human being understands it, the founders of extant religions included. I just assume that there is an unknown aspect to our lives and leave it at that.

       The unknown X in our lives, I do not think can be understood through our current separated conceptual categories.

CONCLUSION

         The ideas expressed in this paper do not fall into any of the usual religious categories. It is not theism or atheism or deism. It is not agnosticism, either.  It is what it is.

       My hunch is that if the universe could produce the complex information in our DNA that it could also produce intelligence outside of matter.     

       Quantum mechanics, particularly the findings of Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Pauli seem to suggest that we (observers) have influence on what we observe. Other observations in quantum physics seem to suggest that all particles are aware of each other, communicate with each other, and, indeed may be each other (non locality). A universe that can produce such wonders can produce an independent intelligence in it.

       However, it is not necessary to use the ideas of quantum mechanics to prove the existence of independent intelligence. Physics studies matter and should not be confused with religious beliefs. I am not interested in commingling the two systems of knowing. Physics should be studied on its own terms and religion (philosophy) should be studied on its own terms. 

      An unknown intelligence, a seeming insane intelligence (for it created a meaningless world) operates, if you like, dreams, through our bodies. That intelligence is not our bodies though the nature of our bodies affects how it operates through them.

       Some weird Intelligence interfaces with the human brain. How it does so, one does not understand and for the present leave it at that.

       What do you think?

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

January 7, 2007

Robot  Villager

# 1 Many textbooks on physiological psychology (neuroscien...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 08.01.2007 06:25

udokaamah  Villager

# 2 Mr. Osuji, You are a show-off. This is the NVS, not a scientific journal. You would be better served publishing "your theory" somewhere else. What is the point of it all? Posted by udokaamah| 08.01.2007 07:42

ErikP  Villager

# 3 I regret you are gravely mistaken about the Abrahamic faiths and Christian anthropological thought as well. In Judaism/Christianity the knowledge of God comes through: a. His works in History, b. His revealed interpretation of that history through Prophets and Apostles, c. His direct action on the consciousness of persons. I think there is a similar understanding in Islam. In Christianity a and b combine supremely in the incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ. The crucial thing is that He takes the initiative in all three ways. Men are guilty of not seeking him sincerely - your article is an excellent example - but He mercifully seeks out people. Ontologically and in every other way we depend on His mercy for salvation. Christians do not have an agreed anthropology but the commonest understanding in theological circles is that man is a psychosomatic unity though there are also classical dualists and tripartitists among us. Posted by ErikP| 08.01.2007 11:03

Oloye  Villager

# 4 =udokaamah;147660>Mr. Osuji, You are a show-off. This is the NVS, not a scientific journal. You would be better served publishing "your theory" somewhere else. What is the point of it all? Very true. You may also add that all his "scientific" writing are easily found and copied from existing testbooks (written by white men). No original thinking emanates from him except when, once in a while, he attempts to use some ethnic groups from Nigeria as subjects of his borrowed theories in order to piss people off and appear scholarly. Posted by Oloye| 08.01.2007 11:27

tonsoyo  Villager

# 5 I cant believe this guy is trying to make us read his "PhD thesis" here. I think the Villagers will find it in their hearts to forgive this man, because he is just another ACADEMIC GONE WILD!!!. Posted by tonsoyo| 08.01.2007 12:47

Auspicious  Villager

# 6 Abeg Villagers, Ahn-ahn, make una allow di guy now. If "New York-based freelance writer" Carlisle U.O. Umunnah can continually reel out his terribly-written doomsday-preaching, ethnic-bashing or simply ethnicist treaties to the raving reviews of Villagers like Tony (Okocha), why should we attempt to stiffle Thomas Ozodi Osuji from sharing his much more comprehensible academic work with his fellow Villagers? And what is with accusing Osuji of being a "show-off" anyways? If you are a writer and you make an attempt to showcase your writing skills, obviously to recieve positive reviews, you are showing-off! And last time I checked, save for essays or articles that may offend your readers (racist, hate-mongering, pornographic-etc) there is NO topic that is off-limit for publishing on the NVS. And I bet you there are people out there who will find Osuji's "academic papers" useful. Auspicious. Posted by Auspicious| 08.01.2007 13:19

tonsoyo  Villager

# 7 Hey Auspi, I personally do not have anything against the write up per se, but as a philosopher, at least from this write up, he should know about 'time and place'. This forum is just not appropriate for such a lengthy and purely academic write-ups. He could write along this line, in less academic and shortened form that even academic work aversed guy like me will not find it offensive. I was forced to finish reading this stuff, I was glad to have abandoned in my Philosophy class 21 years ago. There are various web site where this may be very appropriate, but for most people in the Village Square, I believe we are just here to unwind from various academic work either from school or office, and read a little of general interest write-ups and definitely not PhD thesis materials. I beg jare haa. Posted by tonsoyo| 08.01.2007 13:52

Auspicious  Villager

# 8 =tonsoyo;147702> I was forced to finish reading this stuff, I was glad to have abandoned in my Philosophy class 21 years ago.. Dat na becos yu be original Gbefila (gbeborun?) jare, Bros. Must you find di 'Koko' of the 'Mata'? Make I tell you di koko...:lol: :D Auspy. Posted by Auspicious| 08.01.2007 15:12

Rose  Villager

# 9 =Auspicious;147696>Abeg Villagers, Ahn-ahn, make una allow di guy now. If "New York-based freelance writer" Carlisle U.O. Umunnah can continually reel out his terribly-written doomsday-preaching, ethnic-bashing or simply ethnicist treaties to the raving reviews of Villagers like Tony (Okocha), why should we attempt to stiffle Thomas Ozodi Osuji from sharing his much more comprehensible academic work with his fellow Villagers? And what is with accusing Osuji of being a "show-off" anyways? If you are a writer and you make an attempt to showcase your writing skills, obviously to recieve positive reviews, you are showing-off! And last time I checked, save for essays or articles that may offend your readers (racist, hate-mongering, pornographic-etc) there is NO topic that is off-limit for publishing on the NVS. And I bet you there are people out there who will find Osuji's "academic papers" useful. Auspicious. This is true. Posted by Rose| 09.01.2007 15:00

Robot  Villager

# 10 Many textbooks on physiological psychology (neuroscien...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 08.01.2007 06:25

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