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 A Zen Garden in Kyoto, Japan. When we see such a garden are we experiencing it as 'outside' our minds or are we just experiencing an internal image? When meditators look at a Zen garden, where is their mind? Is it within their brain or is it in the garden? [Photo: John Grange] Beyond the Brain Is the Mind the Same as the Brain? Paul Devereux Investigates
A crucial philosophical struggle is taking place within science about the
nature of the mind and its place in the physical universe. The outcome of
this will determine the future course of human destiny, and so should
concern Freemasonry which, behind its social, secular activities, its fellowship
and philanthropy, has philosophical principles as its integral guiding lights.
Physical reality only appears solid to us because we are part of the same mirage, the same atomic dance. Even the very space within which that dance takes place is not empty, for it seethes with mysterious quantum-level fluctuations referred to by physicists as ‘vacuum energy’. Many people, including some of those physicists, are asking if consciousness is already there, in that ground-state shimmer of our universe. Is it that subtle but all-pervading level that which mystics variously describe as the Tao, the void, oceanic consciousness, Mystical Union, or the Godhead? This brings us to the other side of the conceptual wall – mind. Wired to the Source Convinced that raw, unstructured consciousness exists at the deep, subatomic quantum level, at the roots of both mind and matter where time and space smear into one another, some scientific researchers are actively seeking the actual, physical doorways in our brains through which we can directly access that primordial level, as the accounts of the mystics indicate is possible. In other words, the researchers are trying to identify brain structures that may facilitate sub-atomic, quantum, effects. Possible candidates include “microtubules” belonging to the skeletal structure of brain cells. These are being investigated by Roger Penrose, a celebrated professor in mathematical physics at Oxford University, and Arizona-based scientist, Stuart Hameroff. If these two or the several other scientists studying such possibilities are proven correct, then it will be the case that our minds are directly ‘wired to the source’. It is salutary to recall that decades ago the great Swiss psychologist, C.G. Jung, argued that the collective unconscious, his hypothesised vast, transpersonal ‘species mind’ of humanity, resides in the very molecules and atoms of the material world. He insisted that ‘psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing’ A similar sentiment was expressed by the astronomer, Sir James Jeans: ‘Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter…’. Physics is only now beginning to catch up with such prescient observations. The Magic Theatre Our personal experience of even the most concrete of material realities is in fact put together for us in the moist darkness within our skulls. We are immersed in, or part of, something-orother whose energies impinge on our sense organs and are then translated into electro-chemical signals that are whisked along nerve fibres and across synaptic connections into various parts of our brain where by some miraculous process in the magic theatre inside the cranium they are made to coalesce into a threedimensional production we take to be the external world. We never see the world as it actually is, only the representation of it conjured by brain activity. Everything we know, inner or outer (if either state truly exists), is a product of consciousness. As difficult as it is for us to appreciate, even our bodies (including our brains) are an ‘inner’ construct of the ‘outer’ world. It is hard for us to accept, but it is nevertheless true: we literally put this inconvenient fact to the ‘back of our minds’. As an oriental sage once said, we can only be certain of one thing – that there is existence. Everything else is virtual reality. Meeting with the Octopus If mind extends beyond the brain, then parapsychology takes on fresh importance. A new science of the subjective would be able to find a framework of understanding in which phenomena like telepathy or remote viewing - ‘clairvoyance’ - can be legitimately included rather than being dismissed by mainstream thought as is the current situation. The evidence for such phenomena is, in fact, much stronger than publically acknowledged, and parapsychological research is advancing. As a prime example of this, Bob Morris, Koestler Professor of parasychology at Edinburgh University, has produced a string of students with doctorates in parapsychology who are now active as faculty in several university departments. The work of Morris and his colleagues in telepathy and remote viewing is meticulous and proving statistically significant: the countdown to unavoidable mainstream acceptance is well under way. In fact, the argument may already be won, as I found out for myself when visiting the laboratories of another tireless worker in parasychology, brain scientist Professor Michael Persinger. Persinger is based at Laurentian University in Sudbury, north of Toronto in Canada. I visited him in 1998, initially to experience his famed ‘magnetic helmet’ which I had heard could produce altered states of consciousness. Persinger’s primary purpose for the device, though, is to find the magnetic signatures of drugs in the brain, so that analgesics, for instance, can be administered in a safer, nonpharmaceutical manner. It applies carefully designed and directed magnetic field patterns to the temporal cortex, a part of the brain sensitive to magnetic field changes and associated with functions such as memory and dreaming. I had an intriguing session under the helmet, but a more significant experience was to follow: Persinger asked if I would like to try out a prototype device they nicknamed the ‘Octopus’. The Octopus itself was well-named, consisting of a headband linked to the computer by a profusion of leads. The prototype contraption was fitted around my cranium as I sat down in a chair. It was explained to me that the headband was fitted with solenoids that would be activated in computer-controlled sequences causing a magnetic field to shift in various configurations over and around my cranium. My eyes were covered with gauze and dark goggles, and the session began. It continued for about forty minutes, during which time I was encouraged to give a running commentary describing any impressions that came to me. This was not difficult as there were two recurring images that came without bidding. One I described as like two telegraph poles silhouetted against a sunset, and the other, even more persistent image, was like a complicated piece of fairground equipment with its various parts painted in different, vibrant colours – I was particularly aware of a bright green. I say the images were ‘like’ these things, because the images were not pictures as such, but more like information I had to interpret. Completely unbeknown to me, my wife had been taken into an adjoining room by the lab technician and asked to select one envelope from several, each containing a picture. She chose one and was asked to write a description of the picture it contained that she felt I might produce if I was looking at it. She did not see the pictures in the other envelopes. After my session, my wife and the envelopes were brought into the laboratory. All the pictures were displayed and I was asked to pick anything that related to the impressions I had received under the Octopus. I identified two. One was of two very tall smokestacks that mark the Sudbury skyline silhouetted against a sunset sky (my ‘telegraph poles’ image), and the other was the picture my wife had actually selected – it showed an oldfashioned railway locomotive painted in variegated colours with a bright green cow-catcher at front. I had ‘seen’ it repeatedly while under the Octopus, yet at that time I couldn't directly conceptualise what it was. I was dumbfounded. Although having no natural psychic ability, there was no doubt that I had achieved remote perception; I felt privileged to have been able to observe the process ‘from the inside’. I could now understand why psychic research so often produces infuriatingly vague and apparently inconsistent results – the problem, the skill, was in the left-brain interpretation of the right-brain information or impressions. I couldn't account for the ‘leakage’ of the smokestacks image, which had never been taken out of its envelope while my wife was present, but I supposed it to be some effect of ‘mind at large’ caused by the actions of the Octopus on the brain that will become fully understood in time. I later asked a colleague from a scientific research group I am part of to visit Persinger and experience the Octopus. A highly trained and accomplished psychologist, she duly did so and had an identical experience to my own. Persinger and colleagues have now conducted much more work with the Octopus, and it is producing remarkable and repeatable results. He is looking at quantum entanglement as a model to explain some of the device’s effects; for me, though, the Octopus has provided something more immediate than statistics or the explanatory powers of quantum physics – it has proven that mind can roam beyond the brain. Paul Devereux is not a Freemason but maintains a strong interest in the spiritual and its links with science. He has written some twenty six books including Stone Age Soundtracks (reviewed in this issue), Living Ancient Wisdom (reviewed in Freemasonry Today 22, Autumn 2002) and Mysterious Ancient America. Website: www.pauldevereux.com.
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