The position of human brain

Before reading this blog, I would request friends to check out the views of present day neuroscientists.
I find the views of Prof VS Ramachandran interesting in this regard. Check this out in case you are not familiar with these ideas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6u4XVrr58
Please spare time to watch the complete series to get an understanding of these concepts .
I shall take the trouble here to deal with the following facts of human brain experience which would be encountered if the video series is watched fully. The idea is to reconcile this with spiritual thinking and more particularly with eastern philosophy. I am using a Sanskrit word called Atman in this blog which also means the "Soul" in English.
The blog is divided in three sections.
1. Summary- Summary of some of the views of modern science along with my short remarks in the same context.

2. Understanding-Trying to understand the logic of spirituality and reflect on the challenges which face modern science. The relation and similarity with machines and non human life forms are explored.

3. Conclusion- How the spiritual concepts explain the summarized observations of section 1.

Summary-
A summary of some of the ideas presented in the videos of VS Ramachandran along with some of my own initial comments is presented below.


1. Psychological denial of certain physical experiences by some people – The peculiar wiring of the Brain of some people makes them deny certain experiences which most others would acknowledge. For example, some people who have lost a limb in their body, still feel that it exists . Another example is of People who do not acknowledge certain colours which everyone else can see. In this context let me quote Henry David Thoreau who said -“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” Is living in such an unrealistic world wrong after all?. What is wrong in denial of known experience if it brings us close to making our dreams true? That is an even more profound thought. As a side remark Advaita Vedanta asks you to keep repeating- "I am not that, I am not that!" until you realize what you are. A most positive denial of everything.

2. Consciousness and brain – How is consciousness linked to the brain. Is it just a by product of brain activity? If that is so why do great sages like Buddha and Ramana Maha Rishi believe in reducing thoughts to zero in order to realize the true meaning of consciousness, isn't that a contradiction of sorts? Though spirituality does not like to view brain with greater seriousness than the problem of soul, there are quite a few interesting spiritual beliefs about the brain which we shall later discuss.

3. Difference in development of different areas of the brain and difference in response to differing positions of objects– The vision and experience of people is distorted by development in different areas of the brain. More significantly people respond to a situation differently, when the position of observed object is changed. To quote the renowned Sivananda in this matter-
"The senses are the gatekeepers of the wonderful factory of the mind. They bring into the mental factory matter for manufacture. Light vibrations, sound vibrations, and the like, are brought inside through these avenues. The sensations are first converted into percepts by the mind, which then presents these percepts to the intellect. The intellect converts these percepts into concepts or ideas. Just as raw sugarcane juice is treated with so many chemicals and passes through various settling tanks, and is packed as pure crystals; just as ordinary clay mixed and treated with plaster of Paris, etc. passes through settling tanks and is made into jugs, jars, plates, cups, etc.; just as crude sand is turned into beautiful glassware of various sorts in a glass factory; so mere light vibrations, sound vibrations, etc. are turned into powerful ideas or concepts of various descriptions in the factory of the mind. " He continues -"The external senses are only instruments in the process of perception. The real auditory, tactile, visual, gustatory and olfactory centres are in the brain and in the astral body. These centres are the real senses which make perception possible. The intellect (Buddhi) receives material from the mind and presents them to the Purusha or the Atman which is behind the screen. The intellect is like the prime minister; it is closer to the Purusha than the mind is. As soon as facts are placed by the intellect before the Purusha, there flashes out egoism (Ahamkara). The intellect receives back the message from the Purusha, decides and determines, and transmits it to the mind for the execution of orders. The external organs of action carry out the orders of the master. "

4.Different areas of the brain are found to deal with different aspects of sensory experience and more than one area is involved in a single experience. A single event such as recognition of a person or object requires participation of different areas of brain. A person can recognize another person by his or her voice but cannot recollect the person when he sees him. This shows that the parts of the brain related to recognition of vision and sound are different. Damage to one area need not mean that the other area is damaged as well.


5. Even pain can be the construct of the mind. Pain remains a construct of the mind. Thus even though a person has lost a limb, the person experiences pain when someone pretends to pinch his lost limb. An interesting observation from Kahlil Gibran who says in 'The Prophet', his all-time classic: 'Your pain is the breaking of a shell that encloses your understanding.' (8. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (London: Pan Book Ltd., 1980) p.61.). Our understanding of pain gets complicated if we refer to the often quoted vedantic view which says that "Pain is inevitable , but suffering is not". It is a simple verse but try to view this in the context of phantom limbs and the mind making a map of body parts

6. Consciousness is not always necessary in an action, this is a well known fact, and people do not always seem to be conscious of what they do. This raises an important question is consciousness necessary for brain to function?

7. Existence of a map in the brain. The brain builds up a map of different areas and linkages between sense organs, experiences, thoughts and pain. So much so that a specific area of the brain could be responsible for the sensation of pain in a particular hand or finger. This finger may cease to exist but that map remains in the brain and pain does not go away until the brain unlearns this experience.

7 .Seizures and religious experience – people with epilepsy can have what is termed as religious experience , what can be described as overwhelming or exaggerated state of emotions in relation to day to day events ,for example feelings of being one with god .

8.Flood of Feelings- A flood of feelings can overcome the brain when certain experiences are evoked. An example is the clever use of art to evoke strong feelings among people who observe the works.


Understanding
As far as eastern spirituality is concerned Brain is only as important as the rest of the Body. But being the one of the limited means by which the Self or Atman can experience the world, it attains importance. Some concepts from Hindu Yogic System might be of interest to some in this regard. I shall briefly mention two concepts
1. Concept of third Eye - The region between the eyebrow is called Agna chakra which some believe to be linked to pituatory gland and this is supposed to be responsible for the control of all sensual activities
2. Concept of thousand petalled lotus in the brain- There is a centre called thuria in the brain believed to be associated with pineal gland. This centre is also called as Sahasrarahara or thousand petalled lotus. There are thousand regional values associated with this, and if all these petals are activated then the mind can be focussed on any level or plane.

Brain is however just a part of the body and that which is not part of the individual and that which is not responsible for the individual’s existence. The individual is called as Atman or the Soul. That such an assumption exists can be reemphasized by the following verse from Bhagawat GIta

Bhagavad-gita 18.61

"Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be."

What is permanent has to be independent of the body because body dies and so does the brain.

Can the modern knowledge of Brain contradict this assumption? I reemphasize here- can actual knowledge, as we know it today contradict this assumption?

Well the facts outlined above as brought out from the videos certainly do not. It is another different story that merely because some knowledge does not contradict an assumption,it does not mean that it has to be right. But to prove a particular view wrong, in this case vedantic understanding of Atman, one must be fully aware of its implications.

Lets look at another verse from the Gita

Bhagavad-gita 18.61

"all living beings, are seated as on a machine made of the material energy."

The second quote is the key here. In another example a verse from Kathopanishad a part of Yajur Veda , compares the body to a chariot , the horses to the sense organs and the driver to the atman.

Let us forget for a moment that there is someone inside the body and view it merely as a mechanical system.
We can view the nerves as a series of connectors having an ability to transform one form of signal to another. These nerves link the brain to the sense organs. These nerves are also used by our brain to send signals to different areas of the body and to control them. It can easily be seen how the nerves can be compared to the reins of a horse. Now what about the brain?
. My question here is: why is the brain any different from the CPU of a computer or from the reins of a horse?
A CPU may be more complex than the reins which control a horse, in that the CPU not only processes and controls the behaviour of the system; it also processes and performs computation based on the information collected. Human brain is however a lot more complex than the present day CPU. I don’t need to be contradicted here, as that is what puts me in the same league as proponents of Artificial Intelligence.

So what does the human brain certainly do? The Information conducted by nerves are mapped to Information already stored somewhere possibly inside a place in the brain itself. Those storage area/areas are the Hard disk or the RAM of the human brain. If all this is certainly true, then where is the scope for human consciousness?

In Vedanta, Atman is described as one of pure consciousness devoid of any physically describable attributes. What I mean is that it does not have attributes like weight, colour, form etc. Awareness of itself is its natural state.

If there is such an Atman in the first place , Science cannot contradict its existence at the present moment. Neither can Science prove its existence. Why is that so?

The answer is simple. Let us visit a Chemistry Lab. What is used to prove something here? The Scientists here have built instruments which can analyze micro and macro compounds and also the way the way they interact with each other. If the soul does not have physical attributes like colour, then a spectroscope cannot see it. If it does not have a sound or a physical vibration then it cannot be known by its vibration. If it does not have a form , then it does not have a size. Even if it has a size it is still not visible since it neither absorbs light, nor reflects it nor does it bend it. In a similar way no matter which lab we visit , we do not have any instrument in that lab, which can record its presence , since the subject has no physical attributes. Thus the existence of Atman cannot be proven by present instruments used in modern Science.

The question which comes to mind is, Is there a need for Atman’s existence?. The justification for the body to exist is its own and the justification for Atman to exist is its own.

Let us take an automated motor vehicle. We assume that there is a motor vehicle that starts and stops by itself. Further it can start based on certain environmental conditions and navigate based on intelligent devices fit to its body. Each intelligent unit can process a certain signal, and compute values and associate these values to certain stored values. Such an association leads to pattern recognition and this pattern recognition can be used as inputs to an associated inbuilt program which makes decisions based on this. Further the programs can make more and more worthwhile decisions based on learning arising out of performance feedback. The feedback of performance is based on measured criteria set up by another program. So in this case the machine is completely independent. We can imagine such a motor vehicle comprising different components each working with one-another and ready to fulfil the common goal of existence. Does such a machine have anything called self awareness? It might, but can it be tested? It may be tested if its awareness is similar to ours. Let us say we have also provided this machine with a speech system which can voice its opinion if it wants to. Now if the machine says something to you, we can immediately try finding out if this is the effect of some program which was self developed in the system. By Studying and proving the existence of such a program, can awareness be established?. My answer is no. This is because it is easily claimed that the development of the program is based on the rules of the programs designed originally in that system. There was one program capable of developing other programs. There need not be awareness for one program to spawn the creation of another program. Such self generating programs have been already built by Lay programmers in the computer field today.
If at all there is a software which was not spawned by any of the existing programs , then it could be speculated that awareness may have been existing in such a system . What that means is that there is something external to the system and to the programs which run on it which motivates the development of something unplanned. This program created by an external awareness is also involved with the system and is similar to the other programs, but the difference is that such a program was not part of the Plane. In this speaking system, the speech system is what the system has in order for it to communicate its feelings. No doubt, if the power to speech system is cut-off then the speech would be cut-off too. And also the system cannot speak to you if it no longer supports programs to run on it. This can be compared to the brain and speech organs of the human body.

But the presence of programs in the system which have come on their own and which have not been spawned by existing programs in the system should be considered as sufficient proof for the existence of external awareness.

What is the implication of such a model. The implication is that, if it can be proven by scientists that there is not even one program in the human brain or nervous system which was not created by an existing program in the human brain, then that means that there is a reasonable cause to doubt the existence of atman in that human brain or body. Such a situation cannot invalidate the existence of atman because awareness may be manifest elsewhere in the world or awareness may be lost in inertia,like in a coma. What do I mean by programs in connection with human brain or body? The answer is simple- a program in this context is just a set of instructions in the human brain and which may be executed in order to achieve a certain outcome, no matter how insignificant it can be. So the goal of scientists should be to prove that every such program is a logical outcome of another program in the human brain. This other program should be an outcome of another such program in the brain. And finally all the first generation programs (which are the cause of other programs and for which no other program is responsible) should be traceable and attributed totally to the human genes or supply of External inputs. If this can be proven then a reasonable case arises to doubt the very existence of Atman.

Needless to say, Science is nowhere near this goal. Nor do I wish to discourage them on this endeavour to disprove the existence of Atman, but this does not mean that the current situation should not be clearly specified..


Anyway the automatic motor vehicle could still be used by some one to ride it if it allows someone to occupy it in the first place. If there are controls for a driver in the vehicle,then the driver can navigate the vehicle to the extent that the machine allows him.The driver might know how to fly a plane as well. He can certainly not fly the automobile because the vehicle is designed not to allow such a possibility. He cannot also exceed a certain speed and once the fuel in the engine is spent , he has to stop. If the vehicle allows no control at all, then the driver is merely a passenger. This is the paragraph that summarizes eastern ideas about the atman and its relation to the body.

The next question which comes to mind is- Is atman really me? If I am not the atman then I am definitely the body. Merely because there are programs which have been introduced in me by an external agent that does not mean that I should not be the body. This is one line of thinking. In such a view, a possibility of external awareness is allowed but it is considered irrelevant to one’s own awareness. Supporters of such a view would show examples of how people who have lost part of their nervous connections fail to recognize someone as important to them as thier mother. I agree with this example, but my counter question is -Is it possible to prove that someone who lost all nervous connections, retains no awareness of even himself. I know the exact counter question to my counter question which is that the onus should be on me to prove that a system without nervous connection is capable of awareness. I can certainly not prove to you if a system without nervous connections can still have awareness residing in it, but I can certainly say that awareness exists in the body at each cellular level even under such a situation. Each cell can behave as though it were an independent living entity like a plant or a bacteria . It has been proven that plants have awareness, when such is the case why cannot individual cells in an organism not have awareneess. If there were no nervous connections in my body , I cannot see or hear or smell or taste or fear. So even if I were aware of myself I would have no way to express myself to you. So the question regarding the absence of awareness when nervous connections fail in our body is irrelevant, because a response cannot be elucidated from the atman without nervous connections in the body. A person in an inaccessible jail cannot know what is happening outside nor can he reply to anyone from outside nor can people outside know about him.

The heart of a brain dead person can still beat. The cells in the heart are still filled up with consciousness in the same way as a plant’s consciousness is filled up.
Thus the absence of brain does not remove consciousness from a body. If that were true then plants could also be considered as entities without self awareness. Now an evolutionary biologist would never deny consciousness completely to such elementary organisms. When such is the case it is sufficient to directly work with the easier problem . Do people with brains and nerves have the capability to introduce programs in their brain or mind which have no basis in genes? This should be the focus of scientists. If it so difficult to work with such a complex system then let them move to simpler systems. Is it possible for a plant to exhibit behaviour which is not derived from its genes or as a consequence of the involvement with a physical entity?

I have thrown open the questions and the scientists are already tackling such profound questions.
I will now get back to how atman works with the brain according to the vedantic view.

I incidentally found out that my ideas came out close to David Chalmers, a contemporary Australian philosopher, he says 'If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. … even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioural functions in the vicinity of experience-perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report, there may still remain a further unanswered question; why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience …? Why doesn't all this information processing go on in the dark, free of any inner feel?'(Quote from http://www.eng.vedanta.ru/library/prabuddha_bharata/Dec2006_consciousness_revisited.php
)
Let us look at the summarized points from the video.


Conclusion

1. Psychological denial of certain physical experiences by some people- Nothing surprising here. Our experience is limited to what our body can offer. If we have no eyes we cannot see, can we? Even if we can see, if the nerves are not connected then signal mapping to Information does not take place. The innerbody or wrapped soul has no way of distinguishing falsehood from truth in so far as external experiences are concerned. Because its experience is based on only what the body has to offer. If you shout and I cannot hear , what difference does it make to me?

2.Brain has its own function to manage body, and as long as brain can function it will function even if most of the nerves are cut or damaged. Consciousness is awareness. I can go into deep sleep and be mostly unaware of things going around me. Consciousness needs the body to fulfil its karma. In such a situation it maintains awareness of worldly experiences by maintaining in touch with consciousness in every cell. For consciousness of one entity to communicate with another there is no need of a body. Body is a window to the physical world. An activity can happen in any cell only if there is an awareness which drives it, since there would be no motivation to act. The nerve cells are significant in this regard because they can transform and form patterns of recognition based on the obtained Information. But it is the consciousness in these cells which create the need for the very existence and action of the nerve cells and it is this individual cellular level consciousness which enables the body's complete consciousness to identify itself with the whole body. To each his own goal. Our individual cells are no different from the individual bacteria in our body. The difference is only in the difference in alignment of the goals of cells and bacteria. Both are born and then face death within the lifespan of the whole body. The consciousness in them is not dependant on their death.

2. Difference in positional behaviour. This is again a totally nerve system problem, It has no relation to atman , the brain behaves exactly the way information is fed to it.

3.Recognition – This might seem like clinching evidence for non believers to the concept of Atman. Why should one level of consciousness have any difficulty recognizing another? I can go further than this and say that since two levels of consciousness do not require a body to communicate , there should be no two people in this world who have any kind of difficulty in knowing about the other person or communicating with another. To quote from the movie The Sixth Sense – “ They see only what they want to See”. I think this one sentence answers the question why the soul which can communicate with another soul fails to do so without sense organs under normal circumstances . It really remains unaware of the proximity of the other individual even though it may be looking for it elsewhere.

4. Pain is indeed a construct of mind. It cannot be part of the nature of Atman. If the latter were true then Atman cannot be independent of the brain. The brain causes an illusion of pain. The consciousness which identifies with the body at some or the other level of the body feels that it is affected by pain but it is not true. When a lady sees her friend cry she joins her even though her suffering is much more temporary than that of her friend's. Imagine what can happen when a whole city full of close friends cry. This is what happens in our body too. People can cry for no reason at all as well and body can experience pain without a cause.

5.Consciousness is not always in an action. This question been answered earlier. It is true and nothing surprising about consciousness getting disconnected with the body.

6.Map in the brain. It is only logical. A well managed city supports its inhabitants with good maps or Information guides. But it is possible that these maps can get outdated. This can tend to cause chaos

7.Seizures and religious experience – But if it is true that temporal lobes can cause religious experience, even then what it means is that temporal lobes can cause a physical manifestation of religious experience. It is not by itself responsible for something spiritual to happen. I am sure that if studied well it can be proven that temporal lobes are responsible for a lot of other mundane things apart from a physical manifestation of spiritual experience. The soul over its different journeys in different bodies has learnt to express spiritual ecstasy in a certain way. All said and done, I am open to the theory that the experience caused by the temporal lobes is another knee jerk reaction of the body. It could just be a mismanagement of nervous system. It might have no spiritual connection associated with it.

8. Flood of feelings and emotions. At the vedantic level the soul or atman at its purest state is above all duality. That is why the yogis are advised to be indifferent to pain and sorrow. As long as you have a feeling, you are still bound to the body or the nervous system.