Does consciousness have its origins in the brain?

[bija]

40 years ago Srila Prabhupada began a world wide campaign to spread a message, a message that long held western scientific views of reality were limited, and in some cases just plain incorrect. He backed up his view with wisdom from the ancient Veda.Wisdom that was broad, deep, and from the Transcendental.

 

In the last 10 years or so, transpersonal science and psychology is gradually being accepted by some scientific schools, due to the findings in quantum physics and other fields of research. Before these recent scientific findings the field of transpersonal psychology and psychiatry were considered by some to be metaphysical quackery.

 

It is interesting to read that these transpersonal thinkers are using modern scientific practice and research, and aligining it with ancient wisdom. I think Srila Prabhupada would be pleased with them to some degree, because now they may be a step closer in understanding what Sri Krsna really is. In Srila Prabhupada's time on earth, such western scientific thinkers were reasonably few. I feel it is promising to see that the truths Srila Prabhupada spent so much time propogating, are gradually being accepted by some of the keen scientific minds of our age.

 

What interests me is this: Krsna consciousness and the message of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu! I truly believe oneday that modern science will grasp the deep purport of this great messiah's message. Any step these modern scientific consciousness researchers make in understanding the Summum Bonum, must be of benefit. Great scientific and religious pioneers like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (who aided in discovering peking man), where personalists. The wise, in my opinion, should take heed to such pioneers, because personality is integral and pervasive - and should at least not be discounted due to some philisophical bias.

 

 

 

 

 

from the book Holotropic Mind by Dr. Stanislav Grof

The Universe as a Machine: Newton and Western Science

At the core of this dramatic shift in thought that has occurred in the course

of the twentieth century is a complete overhaul of our understanding of

the physical world. Prior to Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum

physics we held a firm conviction that the universe was composed of solid

matter. We believed that the basic building blocks of this material universe

were atoms, which we perceived as compact and indestructible. The atoms

existed in three-dimensional space and their movements followed certain

fixed laws. Accordingly, matter evolved in an orderly way, moving from the

past, through the present, into the future. Within this secure, deterministic

viewpoint we saw the universe as a gigantic machine, and we were confident

the day would come when we would discover all the rules governing

this machine, so that we could accurately reconstruct everything that had

happened in the past and predict everything that would happen in the future.

Once we had discovered the rules, we would have mastery over all we

beheld. Some even dreamed that we would one day be able to produce life

by mixing appropriate chemicals in a test tube.

Within this image of the universe developed by Newtonian science,

life, consciousness, human beings, and creative intelligence were seen as

accidental by-products that evolved from a dazzling array of matter. As

complex and fascinating as we might be, we humans were nevertheless

seen as being essentially material objects—little more than highly developed

animals or biological thinking machines. Our boundaries were defined

by the surface of our skin, and consciousness was seen as nothing

more than the product of that thinking organ known as the brain.

Everything we thought and felt and knew was based on information that

we collected with the aid of our sensory organs. Following the logic of this

materialistic model, human consciousness, intelligence, ethics, art, religion,

and science itself were seen as by-products of material processes that occur

within the brain.

The belief that consciousness and all that it has produced had its origins

in the brain was not, of course, entirely arbitrary. Countless clinical

and experimental observations indicate close connections between consciousness

and certain neurophysiological and pathological conditions such

as infections, traumas, intoxications, tumors, or strokes. Clearly, these are

typically associated with dramatic changes in consciousness. In the case of

localized tumors of the brain, the impairment of function—loss of speech,

loss of motor control, and so on—can be used to help us diagnose exactly

where the brain damage has occurred.

These observations prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that our mental

functions are linked to biological processes in our brains. However, this

does not necessarily mean that consciousness originates in or is produced

by our brains. This conclusion made by Western science is a metaphysical

assumption rather than a scientific fact, and it is certainly possible to come

up with other interpretations of the same data. To draw an analogy: A good

television repair person can look at the particular distortion of the picture

or sound of a television set and tell us exactly what is wrong with it and

which parts must be replaced to make the set work properly again. No one

would see this as proof that the set itself was responsible for the programs

we see when we turn it on. Yet, this is precisely the kind of argument

mechanistic science offers for "proof" that consciousness is produced by

the brain.

Traditional science holds the belief that organic matter and life grew

from the chemical ooze of the primeval ocean solely through the random

interactions of atoms and molecules. Similarly, it is argued that matter was

organized into living cells, and cells into complex multicellular organisms

with central nervous systems, solely by accident and "natural selection."

And somehow, along with these explanations, the assumption that consciousness

is a by-product of material processes occurring in the brain has

become one of the most important metaphysical tenets of the Western

worldview.

As modern science discovers the profound interactions between creative

intelligence and all levels of reality, this simplistic image of the universe

becomes increasingly untenable. The probability that human

consciousness and our infinitely complex universe could have come into

existence through the random interactions of inert matter has aptly been

compared to that of a tornado blowing through a junkyard and accidentally

assembling a 747 jumbo jet.

Up to now, Newtonian science has been responsible for creating a very

limited view of human beings and their potentials. For over two hundred

years the Newtonian perspective has dictated the criteria for what is an acceptable

or unacceptable experience of reality. Accordingly, a "normally

functioning" person is one who is capable of accurately mirroring back the

objective external world that Newtonian science describes. Within that

perspective, our mental functions are limited to taking in information

from our sensory organs, storing it in our "mental computer banks," and

then perhaps recombining sensory data to create something new. Any significant

departure from this perception of "objective reality"—actually

consensus reality or what the general population believes to be true—

would have to be dismissed as the product of an overactive imagination or

a mental disorder.

Modern consciousness research indicates an urgent need to drastically

revise and expand this limited view of the nature and dimensions of the

human psyche. The main objective of this book is to explore these new observations

and the radically different view of our lives that they imply. It is

important to point out that even though these new findings are incompatible

with traditional Newtonian science, they are fully congruent with revolutionary

developments in modern physics and other scientific disciplines.

All of these new insights are profoundly transforming the Newtonian worldview

that we once took so much for granted. There is emerging an exciting

new vision of the cosmos and human nature that has far-reaching implications

for our lives on an individual as well as collective scale.

[bija]

 

from the book Holotropic Mind by Dr. Stanislav Grof

 

Consciousness and Cosmos: Science Discovers Mind in Nature

As modern physicists refined their explorations of the very small and the very

large—the subatomic realms of the microworld and the astrophysical realms

of the macroworld—they soon realized that some of the basic Newtonian

principles had serious limits and flaws. In the mid-twentieth century, the

atoms that Newtonian physics once defined as the indestructible, most elementary

building blocks of the material world were found to be made of even

smaller and more elementary parts—protons, neutrons, and electrons. Later

research detected literally hundreds of subatomic particles.

The newly discovered subatomic particles exhibited strange behavior

that challenged Newtonian principles. In some experiments they behaved

as if they were material entities; in other experiments they appeared to

have wavelike properties. This became known as the "wave-particle paradox."

On a subatomic level, our old definitions of matter were replaced by

statistical probabilities that described its "tendency to exist," and ultimately

the old definitions of matter disappeared into what the physicists call

"dynamic vacuum." The exploration of the microworld soon revealed that

the universe of everyday life, which appears to us to be composed of solid,

discrete objects, is actually a complex web of unified events and relationships.

Within this new context, consciousness does not just passively reflect

the objective material world; it plays an active role in creating reality

itself.

The scientists' explorations of the astrophysical realm is responsible for

equally startling revelations. In Einstein's theory of relativity, for example,

space is not three-dimensional, time is not linear, and space and time are

not separate entities. Rather, they are integrated into a four-dimensional

continuum known as "space-time." Within this perspective of the universe,

what we once perceived as the boundaries between objects and the distinctions

between matter and empty space are now replaced by something new.

Instead of there being discrete objects and empty spaces between them the

entire universe is seen as one continuous field of varying density. In modern

physics matter becomes interchangeable with energy. Within this new

worldview, consciousness is seen as an integral part of the universal fabric,

certainly not limited to the activities contained inside our skulls. As British

astronomer James Jeans said some sixty years ago, the universe of the modern

physicist looks far more like a great thought than like a giant supermachine.

So we now have a universe that is an infinitely complex system of vibratory

phenomena rather than an agglomerate of Newtonian objects.

These vibratory systems have properties and possibilities undreamed of in

Newtonian science. One of the most interesting of these is described in

terms of holography....

[AncientMariner]

Western material science is a tough nut to crack. Even if you can crack it a little the stuff they come up with is viewed as new age metaphysics or something like that.