You are not your brain

[Guest guest]

Dear advaitins,

 

I just read a mini-review of a book on the Biology of Consciousness. I

am posting the excerpt below. Although it might not be connected

directly to advaita, I am struck by how close the lesson is to the

lessons to be learnt from advaita.

 

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sciam-reviews-march-2009

 

Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from

the Biology of Consciousness

by Alva Noë. Hill and Wang, 2009

 

Alva No, a University of California, Berkeley, philosopher and

cognitive scientist, argues that after decades of concerted effort on

the part of neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers " only one

proposition about how the brain makes us conscious ... has emerged

unchallenged: we don't have a clue. " The reason we have been unable to

explain the neural basis of consciousness, he says, is that it does

not take place in the brain. Consciousness is not something that

happens inside us but something we achieve it is more like dancing

than it is like the digestive process. To understand consciousness the

fact that we think and feel and that a world shows up for us we need

to look at a larger system of which the brain is only one element.

Consciousness requires the joint operation of brain, body and world.

" You are not your brain. The brain, rather, is part of what you are. "

 

If the moderators believe this is not a relevant posting, I apologise.

 

Sincerely,

Sai