The actual energy-controlling center of your body is not your brain. The central nervous system is paralleled by the enteric nervous system (digestive system), which mostly functions independently from the brain with its own neurotransmitters and is in fact what allows the brain and central nervous system to go on functioning. Many prominent gastroenterologists now see the enteric nervous system as a "second brain." I have discovered that between the central nervous system and the enteric nervous system is an energy system that is centered in the solar plexus area. It is in this solar plexus area that not only many somatic opposites touch, but it is where the actual meeting of soma and psyche is most deeply rooted. The belief focused on the brain as this meeting point is rooted in history-long hierarchical prejudice that sees the top of the human body (the head and its crown) as the place where psychic light makes contact with the somatic lower animal. This prejudice prevents one from being able to see the real meaning and value of somatic reality and in turn prevents one from being able to see the real relationship between soma and psyche and consciousness, which is not located in the body or in the psyche. Consciousness is the result of soma and psyche fusing and the center of this fusing process in the body is in the solar plexus area and not in the brain. Consciousness is not a brain activity. Brain activity is a non-conscious process and this has been proven clinically. We know 'scientifically' that most human activity is done without the aid of consciousness. People can do their jobs and drive their cars without consciousness having much to do with it. To be alive and efficiently functioning does not mean that consciousness is prevalent in the process. Consciousness is that which can witness this activity and make a meaning-assessment of it. The activity itself does not require any particular depth of consciousness. It is a neural learned non-conscious process. It is not consciousness that learns to ride a bicycle. It is the body that non-consciously learns to ride a bicycle. In fact, if you become particularly conscious while riding a bicycle you might well crash unless your consciousness has learned to be at ease with the non-conscious reality around it. And this takes us into the heart of our subject.
Nascent consciousness (the consciousness of the human race at this evolutionary point) is not comfortable with the reality around it, neither the material reality nor the psychic reality, because it doesn't see what its relationship with them is and they both seem at times to be rather indifferently dangerous. But more than that, they are weird because they both are and are not the same thing as consciousness. The remaining incoherence is compensated by spiritual fantasies, political fantasies, materialist cynicism, or just plain stupid submergence-indulgence ('get it while you can').
We don't have a 'picture' of reality that actually includes all of reality in a meaningful and coherent way. So I am attempting to draw such a picture and I begin with the microcosm.
How do you see yourself as an individual human being? There is a material body. What does that mean - material? Please ask yourself where your thoughts went in trying to answer this question. Did you turn to established 'scientific' statements as far as you can understand them to answer the question? (What does science actually say?) Or did you just say, Well, it's what is all around me. (It is what is all around what? Is me different from it?)
In looking at material reality microcosmically, science has found a bottomless abyss of mysteries. Science in fact has no actual definition of material here because it can't find the bottom that explains everything else. It can't actually find matter even though it is 'all around us'. (And again, what is this 'us'?) Science prides itself on not being duped by religion or spiritual philosophy, but it is no more able to justify itself than they are. Neither side can justify itself because neither side can find the reality of its own primary premise. And they refuse to even consider the possibility that both sides exist only in relation to each other. That is, we know that the material exists because of the non-material and we know that the non-material exists because of the material. This is not to say that the material and the non-material are not real. It is to say rather that their reality is part of a reality that is larger than either one or both. I am not saying that science has no valid knowledge. I am saying it does not have knowledge sufficient to justify a philosophy of absolute rational materialism. And I am not saying that spiritual philosophy has no valid knowledge. I am saying it does not have knowledge sufficient to justify a philosophy of absolute superiority of Spirit. So here I return to my question: How do you see yourself as an individual human being? Science says you are a layering of levels of material reality from skin down to molecules and your 'consciousness' is just a sense-stimulated 'epiphenomenon' of brain activity. Religion and spiritual philosophy say that you are a 'soul' or a 'spirit' that is somehow contained by a bio-material vehicle for various reasons. I am saying these explanations are assumptions of relative value and I am suggesting that you discard them as best you can in order to have a more direct experience and perception of the body and the psyche and what it is that is aware of these things.
Begin with the body. Do you ever take the time to actually be aware of the body? Just because the body goes on functioning as a biological reality doesn't mean you are actually aware of it. It doesn't need your awareness to function.
If you allow yourself to lie down somewhere quiet and become aware of every living dynamic inch, every cm of your body, you will discover that you have been conditioned by your culture to believe that in order to be aware of any part of your body you have to direct the brain and eyes to that part. I have seen this time and again when I ask someone to focus their attention on the forehead between the eyes and then ask them to move that attention down through the body to the solar plexus their eyes literally turn downward as though the attention can't find anything unless it is being guided by the eyes and the brain. That is, you are the eyes and the brain and you are locating something that is other than you but somehow attached to you.
(When I was a kid I saw a B science-fiction movie titled THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN and the title assumed of course that you knew that Hitler's brain equaled Hitler. None of the rest his forgotten body mattered. If you had his brain, you had Hitler. I saw another B science-fiction movie titled THE ATOMIC BRAIN in which an unhappy rich old woman hires a scientist to transplant the atoms of her brain into the body of a beautiful young woman whose brain atoms have been nefariously removed from her beautiful young body. If the procedure is successful the old woman, as the atoms of her brain, can then be inside a beautiful young body. Unfortunately for her the scientist betrayed her and put her brain atoms inside the body of a cat. MEEEOOOW! People laugh heartily at such nonsense, not seeing that it is rooted in the actual beliefs of the culture.)
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