Demystifying Reincarnation 12 – Where is the programmer of the brain

Thank you.

Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. Welcome back to our series on demystifying reincarnation.

We are discussing the mystery of consciousness. Suppose we met a person, very intelligent, especially somebody has above average memory, above average analytical power. Many people ask, what do you have up there? Do you have some special substance in the brain by which you are able to remember so much, able to analyze so fast? And suppose we did a brain scan and we found there was nothing there.

That if a torchlight was passed through the brain, it would just pass through entirely because that person had no cerebral hemisphere inside the cranial cavity. They had simply cerebrospinal fluid in it. The cerebrospinal fluid not around the brain, but instead of the brain.

And if such a person had not just average, but above average intellectual capacity, that person had IQ score about 125. You would be wondering what is happening? Such are the mysterious findings that have prompted the reconsideration of the idea that the brain is the producer of consciousness. Let's look at this systematically.

How can consciousness, memory and intelligence function without the brain, without the brain substance? That is the question that is raised by much scientific research. For a long time, it was thought that the brain cells don't change. Our whole body goes through changes.

All the body cells change. But people thought that because we have stable memories throughout our life, the memories will require a stable locus, a stable foundation. And that was the brain.

So it was thought that whatever brain cells we get since our birth, that's what the brain cells are. The brain cells only die. And because the brain cells die, that's why our memory decreases as we grow old.

But it was found by the research of a team of scientists from Harvard University, the Salk Institute and the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden. They all reported in the journal National Medicine that cell genesis occurs in human brains. And the human brain retains the potential for cell renewal throughout life.

What was the implication of this finding? That brain, not only old cells die, but new cells are born and new cells replace the old cells. So in a New York Times article, neuroscientist Dr. Elizabeth Gould of Princeton University, who was one of the pioneers of the discovery, explained, people believed that in order to store memories for a lifetime, we need a stable brain. If cells are constantly aging and new ones being produced, how could that be possible? To understand this problem, consider that suppose someone wrote a message for you on a piece of paper and gave that message to you.

And one by one, we removed all the molecules that comprise the paper. One by one by one, all this thought experiment. And after every single molecule in the paper was replaced, we found that the message was still there on the paper.

You'd be astounded. How did that message come there? So Dean Radin, a consciousness researcher, and he points out in his book, Conscious Universe, all of the material used to express the pattern of information has disappeared. And yet the pattern still exists.

What holds the pattern, if not matter? This question is not easily answered by the assumptions of a mechanistic, purely materialistic science. The question raised by is so difficult that this also is issue of where are our memories stored? How are they stored? This is also mentioned in Science Magazine's 125 unanswered questions within science. And although tremendous strides have been made in terms of understanding the brain, but still the mechanism for understanding how memories are stored remains still a mystery.

So perhaps a more productive approach would be to reconsider the materialistic assumptions about consciousness and memory that makes understanding this so difficult. Now, could it be that our brain, our memories are stored, not just in the brain cells, but somewhere else? It's like the message is not just there on the paper, it is somewhere else, maybe on a stamp. And as the molecules are being regenerated, new molecules are coming in, that message is being stamped again on the paper.

That is how no matter how many cells in the paper change, still the message remains. So could memories be stored outside the brain somewhere? And could whatever is the storage of the memory, storage point of the memory, could that also be the source of consciousness? Another reason for considering this is what we will come to later. But obvious objection that many people raise to the idea that memories and consciousness and conscious functioning exist outside the brain.

The problem with this is they say is that whenever the brain is damaged, the person's functioning gets damaged. So, for example, when the area of the brain connected to say the motor nervous system gets damaged and the person's motor nervous functions, just lifting hands, moving legs, they get damaged. Optical area of the brain gets damaged, the person may have difficulty in seeing.

So, yes, this is true. And this connection is definitely there. But does that necessarily mean that the brain is the producer of consciousness? The renowned psychologist William James has said that the same phenomena of the correlation between brain damage and physical functionality damage, this could be explained if we consider the brain as a transmitter of consciousness, not the producer of consciousness.

He used the example of a prism. When light passes through a prism, then it gets separated into a spectrum of seven colors. If the prism gets damaged, then the spectrum won't form.

But this does not necessarily mean that the brain, that the prism is producing, the prism is producing the light, it is actually transmitting the light and damage to the prism causes the light which is transmitted to be distorted. Similarly, if the brain were a transmitter, not a producer of consciousness, even then the function that one does with their consciousness would be damaged if the brain would be limited if the brain gets damaged. A more contemporary example for this could be a person working with a computer system.

If, say, a part of the processor or the memory or the hardware which is connected with, say, analyzing data, performing calculations or storing something that is damaged and those corresponding functions would not be able to be done by the user. Although the user still exists, the user won't be able to do those functions. Similarly, if consciousness exists separate from the body and if the brain is like a computer for the conscious agent to act through it, then what would happen? Then also, if the brain is damaged, that person will not be able to perform those functions.

This means that actually the brain could very well be the transmitter of consciousness, not the producer of consciousness. Now, if both these hypotheses could explain this correlation between brain damage and physical functionality limitation, then which hypothesis is more reasonable? Actually, if you consider that there are some people who are able to function, who have consciousness, memory, analytical capacity, all these despite having practically no cerebral hemisphere, no brain substance, is your brain really necessary? This was the provocative title of an article by the, by James Lorber, John Lorber of the University of Sheffield, a former member of the Nobel Prize Committee. This is the article published in the Science magazine in December 1980.

And he had, Lorber had earlier done research and long ago published in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology in December 1970, the report about two children who had been suffering from severe hydranencephaly. Hydranencephaly means that their brain is filled with cerebrospinal fluid. So, the cerebrospinal fluid is not around their brain, it is instead of their brain.

Normally, anybody who suffers thus has very little chance of survival and they die within the first few years of their life itself. But these two children had lived for a long time and they had IQs around 100, which is well within the average. And then he continued to study, then he found that a significant number of people were like this, who had, whose cerebral hemisphere was less than 5% of what is normal in a human being.

And still they had IQs above 100 and they went on to live normal lives. In fact, the most astonishing case was found in the University of Sheffield itself, where Lorber had studied. He reported that there is a young student at this university who has an IQ of 126, has gained a first class honours degree in mathematics and is socially completely normal.

And yet the boy has virtually no brain. When we did a brain scan, we saw that instead of the normal 4.5 centimetre thickness of brain tissue between the ventricles and the cortical surface, there was just a thin layer of mantle measuring a millimetre or so. His cranium is filled mainly with cerebrospinal fluid.

And before Lorber also, Gustave Galli, a French physician, had also reported similar cases of people with no cerebral hemisphere or very little cerebral hemisphere and they have lived normal lives, he reports in his book, from conscious to unconscious, from unconscious to conscious. Now, the idea that our brain may not really be necessary, it sounds so provocative as to be outrageous. But another surgery, which was considered impossible earlier, but which is now common, is also pointing to this possibility, that is the surgery of hemispherectomy.

Hemispherectomy means that in this, half of the brain is removed. Because of certain infections, because of certain medical needs, surgeons had for a long time been removing small parts of the brain and they had found that the subjects are able to continue functioning. But the idea that, you know, half of the brain could be removed, Charles Choi, who wrote about this in Scientific American, 24 May 2007, he said, the operation known as hemispherectomy, where half the brain is removed, sounds too radical to even consider, much less perform.

In the last century, however, surgeons have performed it hundreds of times for disorders uncontrollable in any other way. Unbelievably, the surgery has no effect on personality or memory. Now, how can that be? Today, many scientists try to explain or explain away this capacity to function normally, despite having only half the brain, by saying that there is a lot of redundancy in brain capacity.

That means the same functions that were performed by one part of the brain, they can also be performed by the other part of the brain. So, even if 50% of the brain is removed, the remaining 50% of the brain can perform all the necessary brain functions. 50% being redundant seems quite, seems a little dubious.

But then what to speak of people who have less than 5% brain. That means we will end up saying that 95% of the brain is redundant, which is clearly an unreasonable idea. So, this again point suggests that our consciousness may not be a product of the brain.

Could it be something distant from the brain? Another question is the source of consciousness is not found in the brain. Where does the source of consciousness lie in the brain? It is not found in the brain. How do we know that? There are two distinct branches of study or findings which have supported this idea.

First is the phenomena of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity means, just like plastic, it can be reshaped in various ways. So, neuroplasticity means that the brain can be reshaped according to human will.

Now, many times, some people suffer from certain brain behavioral disorders because the brain structure is damaged. And in some cases, because the brain is so complex and its structure is so intricate that surgery also is not guaranteed to recover, to help recover. So, such behavioral disorders caused by brain dysfunctionality, how are they to be dealt with? So, Norman Deutsch, the psychiatrist, who in his New York Times bestseller book, The Brain That Changes Itself, he gave inspiring stories about how people literally, by their thoughts, by their attitudes, they rewire their brain.

So, now, according to current mainstream paradigm, consciousness is simply a product of the brain. Just like one reductionistic scientist gives the example that if, say, the train is moving and the train blows a whistle. So, whistle is something which comes out of the train.

But the whistle doesn't affect how the train will move or where it will move or what speed it will move. It's just a byproduct. So, consciousness is thought as a byproduct of the brain functioning.

And it is an epiphenomenon. That is what is one opinion. But then, how does the product affect the producer? Here, what was found was that people who were not curable by any other means, they were cured just by redirecting their consciousness in proper ways.

Not just curable, not just behaviorally incurable, but actually they were structurally damaged and the brain structure was not considered curable by surgical or clinical intervention. And yet, by adjusting their thoughts, by changing their consciousness, by refining their attitudes, they were able to literally rewire their brains. So, Norman Deutsch, he pointed out that the most important alteration in our view of the brain, since we first sketched out its basic anatomy and the working of its basic component, the neuron, this is a major, major change.

And like all revolutions, this one will have profound effects. So, neuroplasticity is not just something which one researcher has found, Norman Deutsch, there are other researchers also. For example, Mario Berger and science journalist Dennis O'Leary in their book, The Spiritual Brain, describe how that many studies have shown how trust and positive expectations can bring about an actual biological change in the brain.

So, Pim Van Lommel states that it would be incorrect to claim that consciousness can only be a product of brain function. How can a product have the ability to change its producer? Another very intriguing experiment, which points to some consciousness being different from matter is done by Wilder Penfield, who is considered the father of neurosurgery, a Nobel laureate neurosurgeon, and he describes it in his book, The Mystery of the Mind. So, he basically probed around in the brain to find out where is the source of consciousness.

So, for example, he had a subject and he knew that there is a particular area of the brain, which is connected with the raising and lowering of the hand. Now, that area of the brain can be activated by electrodes or by some other mechanism. Initially, Penfield asked the subject, raise your hand.

The subject raised the hand and they found that that particular part of the brain was activated. And he asked the subject to describe what happened. He said, I raised my hand.

And then he told, put your hand down, put his hand down, and that particular area of the brain got deactivated. So, then he then activated that part of the brain separately. That means through external means, through the electrode, he activated that part of the brain.

And then the hand went down. And he asked the subject, did you raise your hand? He said, no, I didn't. You did.

Then he deactivated that part of the brain. The hand came down. What happened? My hand fell down.

Did you put your hand down? No, I didn't. You did. Simple experiment, but profound implication.

Suppose, to understand the implication, we can consider, say, I have a computer and I have a computer. As soon as I press the print button, the printer hand of the computer starts moving. Now, it is my computer, but you can come and you can press the print button also.

And if you press the print button, in the first case, I would say that I pressed the print button and the printer hand started moving. In the second case, I would say that I didn't press the print button. You pressed the print button.

That is why the hand is moving up and down. So, we consider the appropriate area of the brain which controls the moving of the hand and leg to be like the print button. So, in the second case, it was Dr. Penfield who pressed the print button, who caused the hand to raise and come down.

In the first case, who did it? Who did it in the first case? Dr. Penfield thought that maybe it's some other area of the brain that did it. And he repeated the experiment while activating different areas of the brain also. And activating different areas of the brain triggered different emotions, different memories, but none of them gave a sense of agency to the person.

Activation of no part of the brain ever made the subject feel that I am raising my hand. He repeated this experiment in multiple ways, which he documents in his book, The Mystery of the Mind. And after three decades of exhaustive research and experimenting with the brain, he concluded that the brain is a computer, but it is programmed by something that is outside itself.

It is programmed by something that is outside itself. Another Nobel laureate, Sir John Eccles, he said that the brain is the messenger to consciousness. So, what does this imply? In this session, we discussed how materialist explanations for consciousness fall short.

Previously, we discussed about how conscious experience and brain chemicals are two distinct categories, and they're just not reconcilable. In this session, we discussed about how the brain cells, although they keep changing, still our consciousness remains unchanging. And yes, brain damage to brain causes limitation of certain functionality, but that could be explained if the brain is transmitting consciousness instead of producing it.

And this idea is supported by the observation of cerebral hydroencephaly, where some people have nearly no brain substance, less than even 5%, 1%, 2%, 3%, and still they have fully normal functional capacities or even above normal functional capacities. So, is your brain really necessary for consciousness? The evidence says no. So, consciousness may well be coming outside the brain.

We also discussed how the brain cells are changing, then where is memory stored? If all the molecules of the paper on which a message is written are changed, then how can the message still stay? It could be that the message is on a stamp somewhere else and is being repeatedly stamped. So, like that, our memories and our consciousness may well exist outside the brain. And we discussed how this idea is further supported by the finding of neuroplasticity, where people who had brain damaged were able to not just change their feelings, but change their brain structure by changing their attitude, changing their consciousness.

So, consciousness cannot be just a byproduct of the brain, because consciousness is able to rewire the brain physically, can change the structure of the brain. And further, we also discussed Dr. Benfield's experiment, which shows that the activator of consciousness does not exist in the brain. The programmer of the brain exists outside it.

So, what exists outside it? So, if consciousness does not come from the brain, consciousness exists outside the brain, what we discussed as plausible based on analysis of past life memories and near-death experiences, now we have analyzed based on theoretical, that those were evidences, these are theoretical analysis. And these seem to, these point towards the idea that consciousness is something distinct. And if that consciousness is something distinct, then the locus of that consciousness, which in some traditions is called as a soul, that may well go from body to body.

And that is the essence of the concept of reincarnation. So, with this discussion, we conclude our scientific analysis on the subject of reincarnation. In our next session, we will discuss the historical analysis about how today people may think reincarnation is a fringe belief of some people.

Actually, it is not. One out of every three persons in the world believes in reincarnation. But still, even if it is considered a minority belief today, but throughout history, it has enjoyed respectability and it has been a part of the religious traditions all over the world.

We will discuss this in our future sessions. Do join us then. Thank you.

Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. Welcome back to the.