Is anger reduced by becoming spiritual or by developing the brain’s frontal lobe that is associated with controlling emotions?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, you want to reduce the anger, I said that we can become more spiritual and that will reduce the anger. But then scientists have found that the frontal lobe of the brain which controls our emotions, if that is more developed then, we can control our anger also.
So, is it that spirituality is related with the frontal lobe of the brain or what exactly is spirituality and how does this function? For anything that we do at a physical level, at the level of the body, we need the physical tool to be functional. Right now, I am speaking, I may have very deep spiritual intention to speak some spiritual wisdom but if my throat is spoiled, I will not be able to speak. So, the spiritual intention has to be complemented with a material instrument.
So, the brain is a material instrument and that has various different areas which relate with different functions. So, yes, we could say that a particular part of the brain is related more with emotionality, a particular part of the brain is related more with rationality or it’s more related with self-control, with restraining our emotions. That’s fine.
But the point is that who is operating that? It’s like somebody who is a weight lifter, that person’s muscles are naturally stronger than other people’s muscles. But those muscles became stronger because someone exercised those muscles. Similarly, yes, if we develop the frontal sense, assume that we can actually correlate particular human functions in particular areas of the brain and assuming that correlation is correct as per arguments and also there is somebody who is operating that brain.
So, if somebody acts regularly in a disciplined and controlled way, then naturally that part of the brain will become stronger. So, that’s the inner muscle for restraining our emotions. But there is someone who has to use that muscle.
Dr. Wilder Penfield was a Nobel Laureate neurosurgeon and he wrote a book The Mystery of the Mind and he did extensive experiments to try to find out where consciousness is located in the brain. So, one experiment he did was he had some subjects raise their hands and when you raise their hands, we know that there is a particular area of the brain which is connected with the motor nervous system. So, that part of the brain got activated.
When a person’s hand is raised, that part of the brain gets activated. That part of the brain gets activated. So, then he mechanically activated that part of the brain and asked the subject, what happened? My hand went up.
The hand would go up. Did you raise your hand? I did. You did.
Then he deactivated that part of the brain. Hand fell down. What happened? My hand fell down.
Did you put it down? No, you put it down. So, now Dr. Penfield asks this question. He says, basically, you could say that this brain, the particular part of the brain, that is like a device, a control center of a device from which the hand moves up and moves down.
Like I have a computer with a printer. The print button causes the printing hand to move up and down. So, like that this hand moves up and down.
So, this is the second case. It was he, Dr. Penfield, who operated that control center in the brain and caused the hand to move up and down. So, in the first case, who operated it? First he said, I am raising my hand and I am putting my hand down.
They are raising. I am not raising my hand. I am not putting my hand down.
You are doing it. So, who is it that is observing me? And then he tried to activate different parts of the brain. But no matter which part of the brain he activated, never would the subject get the feeling that I am doing the thing.
Subject would say, yeah, oh, I am remembering my childhood. I am remembering this. I am remembering that.
But the rememberer, the person who is remembering, the person who is healing, the person who is the agent of action, that was never found in the brain. So, he computed after almost 40 years of brain research that the source of consciousness is extra-cellular brain. It is outside the brain.
The brain is like a computer but it is programmed by something outside the brain. So, that means that, yes, if we could develop a particular part of the brain which is associated with self-control, then that might help us to control ourselves better. But who is it that is developing that part of the brain? That is the focus of spiritual study.
Just like if somebody develops their vocal chords well, they will sing better. Somebody develops a part of the brain connected with self-control, they will be able to control themselves better. But who is it that is doing that? That is not the brain.
That is the source of consciousness, the spiritual entity that is separate from the brain. Thank you.