Is the difference in consciousness between humans and animals because of brain complexity?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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question is the difference in consciousness between humans and animals because of the size and functionality and complexity of the brain we say that it is a difference in category not in degree but can we rule out the role of the brain in it no the brain is definitely critical in the transmission of consciousness to the physical level just as depending on the kind of eyes that we have we will perceive certain things if our eyes are weak then the person may be intelligent but they will not be able to perceive just like it happens that for blind people they may be very intelligent but their vision is limited or their vision may not be there at all depending on magnitude of the blindness so now the brain is the physical tool through which consciousness usually streams to the physical level and naturally that tool will determine how consciousness is expressed so that consciousness that the brain has a role in the manifestation of consciousness at the physical level that is that is not debatable at all that is something which is acceptable completely but now whether the brain originates consciousness or transmits consciousness that is what is the matter of differentiation of now the materialistic paradigm is that the brain originates consciousness now that raises the question that how can matter experience how can matter experience matter and that we really has no empirical or theoretical explanation that is reasonable or satisfactory we can explain how certain things work in particular situations and the capacity to process information will also to some extent depend on the capacity of the tool for processing information if a person is working on a computer and some person is working on a computer with a very small RAM another person is working on a computer with a big RAM now both of them are scientists and both of them are doing some research now both of them may be equally competent scientists but depending on the tool that they have they may be able to function faster or slower and similarly depending on the tool we have we as souls have the body and the brain within it is like a tool so the capacity to process consciousness, the capacity to process information and the capacity to channel and experience consciousness that is affected now normally speaking even when there are precocious children so precocious children are extraordinary because at a child’s age we don’t expect extraordinary ability in maths or robotics or music or whatever else and that’s because I just said the body is developed at a particular level, the brain is developed at a particular level but we have exceptions now we could say the exceptions that the brain itself is special which could be so the point here is that there is a particular thing which is standard and there are exceptions to it now the physical tool is of a particular way in particular with particular bodies even among pets those who train dogs know that while dogs all have a certain level of perception or intelligence some dogs are more intelligent than others not all dogs can work as say therapy dogs some can be trained too so within a particular species also like within human species also different people can have different degrees of reasoning or intellectual processing abilities, experiential capacities so that’s all related with the instrument through which the consciousness is streaming to the physical level and that instrument can also be shaped accordingly in different ways, so meditation has been shown to rewire certain areas of the brain there are some scientists who try to make a god machine which was essentially that they observed, this is a very bare bones kind of explanation of this that they observed which parts of the brain were activated when people claimed to experience god say nuns or monks or people who are mystics when they entered into a meditative consciousness according to their first person experience or claim they observed their brains and then they created a created a machine which would activate those parts of the brains the god helmet as it was called now atheists who wore that Richard Dawkins wore that, he did not experience anything, others did not experience anything, so the experience is correlatable with the experience of something higher is correlated with certain brain activity but is not reducible to that so because the brain is a channel so the consciousness, so naturally humans who have in the hierarchy of spiritual evolution who have the privilege of capacity for metaphysical inquiry and spiritual growth to much greater degree than animals the humans have also been equipped with a physical tool for that purpose and that tool is the brain thank you