In our American culture, we believe that consciousness lives in the brain. We think that our ‘mind’ and our ‘brains’ are the same thing. The brain is the organ in the body that processes thoughts and images. The mind ‘is the faculty of an individual that is responsible for thinking, feeling, reasoning, and willing, encompassing both conscious and unconscious mental processes.’ (google.com) One, the brain is living tissue. The other, mind, is perception, or consciousness.
Recent research has shown that people who are born with very little brain matter can have above average consciousness. It was reported in the Lancet that a 44 year old man developed a weakness in his left leg. When he went to the doctor and was examined, they found that his brain was almost nonexistent and his skull was filled with water, due to having suffered hydrocephalus when he was 6 months old. This man was the father of two children and worked as a civil servant in France. Obviously, his brain was miniscule, but his cognitive function and consciousness were intact.
Professor John Lorber (University of Sheffield, 1980) studied 600 cases of children who had hydrocephalus. Of that group of 600, he took the 30 most severe cases of brain atrophy and studied them. They all had IQs of over 100 and lived normal lives. Some of them had college degrees, and one was even a math genius whose brain was only 1 millimeter thick. His brain mass was 44 times smaller than normal brains. The obvious conclusion is that brain mass does not equal intelligence or consciousness.
Though research is still emerging, Scientists have come to understand that the brain does not just have just neurons, synapses, but also microtubules which connect the physical brain to the quantum dimension. These microtubules are found to be able to adjust themselves and receive information even in the presence of minimal brain tissue. The scientists theorize that these proteins that make up these tiny tubes may be key to consciousness. They believe that they are the bridge that converts vibrations in the atmosphere/environment into images and thoughts that we can understand.
From a holistic perspective, this makes perfect sense. We know that health is a set of frequencies that can be measured via different devices. We see this in our medical heart scans and in brain scans. Neuroscientists have been able to determine that brains process information between 500 – 1000Hz. Microtubules vibrate much faster, theorized to be up to 10^43 Hz. This may explain why we have the hairs stand up on the back of our neck for no obvious reason. We have all had the experience of getting the shivers when there is no apparent reason of danger. We have not had the words for what we ‘felt’ but we have had those feelings, and they did not come from what we ‘know.’
Some feel that ‘consciousness’ is the ability not just to have cognition, but to also receive from the spiritual dimension. If these microtubules do in fact, give us access to information vibrating at a much higher level than can be processed by our physical brains, then we may have a clue that consciousness is far more than a tissue response to mental stimulation.
Until next time,
Dr. Polly
