Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "brain"

Consciousness is something all of us share, or rather without it, we'd cease to exist. It is what makes us the most advanced species on this planet.
Consciousness is the most simple and common phenomenon on this planet, yet in the hands of hardcore philosophers it has become the most complex one.
So, the question I shall be answering today is - what is consciousness?
In short, consciousness is the basic awareness of being alive in any organism. It is the rudimentary biological phenomenon that enables an organism to respond to its environment. Every single organism on this planet has consciousness. And the higher we climb up the tree of life, the more complex and advanced the consciousness becomes. And the species that possesses the most advanced consciousness on earth is us, the Homo sapiens.
Consciousness has remained an enigmatic mystery for time immemorial, mostly by the exaggeration of the philosophers. However, with the advancement of Neuroscience in the last few decades, we have truly begun our journey to explore the true biological foundation of consciousness. And even though philosophers and mystics throughout the world want you to believe otherwise, the foundation of consciousness lies in the complex interplay of the brain circuits. Or in short, consciousness is born in your brain. You may read my book Homo: A Brief History of Consciousness to catch up with the evolutionary processes that led to the arrival of Human Consciousness.
Human brain is the most complex organized structure in the universe. It is the biological organ with mind boggling capabilities. It is made up of a hundred billion nerve cells or neurons. And the relentless activity of these neurons gives rise to the fascinating phenomenon, which we call human consciousness. All our feelings, emotions, thoughts, ambitions, religious sentiments and even our sense of self are simply born from the activity of these little specks of jelly in our head.
Every living creature on this planet is conscious. It is the most common element of life. Without consciousness life doesn't exist. Because consciousness enables a creature to understand the basic biological needs of survival. It is all in the nervous system. Even the plants have a kind of nervous system. The response of a plant to physical stimuli is a consequence of long range electrical signaling through the entire plant body. This is similar to the basic characteristics of the neurobiology in animals.
We can tell a lot about a creature's level of consciousness by understanding their perception of death. For example, we see a fascinating behavior in crows concerning death. When a crow dies, other crows vigilantly gather around its body. They perceive the death of their fellow crow as murder. And their vigilance over the dead crow serves a significant purpose. By sticking close to the crow that was killed, other crows may improve their chances of learning about the predators that they need to avoid.
Human rituals for dealing with the dead are vivid and varied. While on the other hand, few animals show more than a passing interest in confronting a dead animal of their own species. For example, African elephants hold a funeral while touching and grooming a dead elephant. Similar behavior can be seen in bottlenose dolphins, chimpanzees and certain species of magpies. We are only starting to understand those behaviors and their level of consciousness.
In short, the more complex the neurobiology gets, the more advanced one's consciousness becomes. And in humans this advancement has gone far beyond the primitive concerns of survival. So the bottom line is, your vividly conscious rich mental universe is simply a construct of your neurobiology. It is what makes you you. It is what makes you unique. It is what makes you attain unimaginable feats of excellence.
However, the air of mystery surrounding consciousness has provided the philosophers and mystics means for survival for ages, but as we neuroscientists keep on exploring further the mysterious domain of consciousness the majority of the philosophers feel threatened. Because the very existence of the philosophers and the mystics is predicated on their metaphysical approach towards explaining consciousness. Which means, the longer they keep it a mystery, the more they can manipulate the minds of masses with magical mysticism.
The purpose of a scientist is to understand every single mysterious phenomenon of this universe, while the hardcore philosophers only attempt to sustain the mysteries as long as they can.
Every true scientist is a philosopher, but not every philosopher is a scientist. Philosophy enables us to imagine the infinite, while science helps us get there. As my dear friend and Mathematician Ronald Cicurel says "our brain works on hypothesis". Here a hypothesis is nothing but a plausible future scenario that our brain simulates based on our predominant ideas, fantasies and beliefs. And then we start working on making that hypothesis a reality. You can read more about this in Ronald's book The Relativistic Brain: How it works and why it cannot be simulated by a Turing machine.
The point it, there is a fascinating mechanism behind everything in this universe. And we scientists attempt to understand those mysteries. Here one might say, it is typical materialistic perspective.
While the reality is, there is no such thing as materialism. The very concept itself is an illusion. Our species evolved around 200,000 years ago in Africa. And we have spent most of our lifetime in the fear of the unknown. We have remained ignorant for thousands of years. And now that we have started to become the true master of the planet, and to reveal the secrets of everything that surrounds us, this very venture feels like a dreadful change to the masses. Thus, in order to sustain the mystery of the unknown, the concept of materialism was born in the human mind. Nobody is to blame here. It is plain subconscious behavior.
However, it is the responsibility of us scientists and all those young students of science to share our discoveries with the world in simple tasteful words. It is our responsibility to awaken the people into the new world of science and reasoning. The darkness of ignorance and fear only thrives in the absence of knowledge. Once the flame of knowledge is bright enough, there shall be no more darkness.

Perfection is not a feature of our world. On this planet nothing is perfect. Yet we crave for perfection. Especially biological life on this planet is definitely far from perfect. We are not perfect. That's where the process of evolution comes in. Biological life including us the sapiens, keeps evolving from an imperfect species to a less imperfect species. So, we keep going in the path of getting less and less imperfect. The process of evolution is a relentless journey from imperfection towards perfection. This perfection is defined by its survival value. And those who can't keep up with the process, get extinct. That's how natural selection works. Either you are a winner, or you lose your license to survive on this planet. It is the very basis of biology. And biology is the bedrock of life.

And when a biological species evolves, in order to adapt to its environment, it adopts some new biological features and gets rid of the unnecessary ones. And this process of adoption and exclusion of biological features is a crucial element in the path of survival. And it has been going on since the birth of the very first life form on this planet, and shall go on in the future.

Human life is a hodge-podge of various biological features. However, the features that distinguish humanity from the rest of the species on this planet are those of our uniquely advanced neurobiology. Our very pride on being the smartest species on earth is predicated on a highly complex and magnificent neurobiology. Our fascinating neurobiology puts us apart from the entire animal kingdom. Without our advanced neural network of a hundred billion nerve cells, we are nothing compared to the brawn of the wild animals.

And this very neurobiology has endowed us with a beautiful psychological system, called the human consciousness. It has endowed us with uniquely majestic cognitive features. The 3 pound lump of jelly, which we call the human brain, is the birthplace of all our extraordinary achievements. Human Brain is the most complex organized structure in this entire universe. It is made up of a hundred billion nerve cells or neurons. The relentless activity of these neurons gives rise to all the richness of our conscious experience. All our feelings, emotions, thoughts, ambitions, love lives, our sense of self, and even our religious sentiments are simply born from the activity of these little specks of jelly in our head.

All our sentiments, whether they are religious, romantic or any other, are born in the neurons. In fact, religion itself is a natural biological feature of the human brain. And as I said earlier, any biological life-form must evolve in order to survive, while modifying its basic biological features. And one of the most significant features of human life, is its religious sentiments. Hence, when Mother Nature decides that some of those religious sentiments are not working properly, she puts selective pressure on the human brain in order to modify those sentiments, and if needed, terminate some and develop new ones. And in this process of religious evolution, two of the most glaring specimens, are Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gautama, whom you know as Buddha.

In the process of biological evolution, change in a biological feature takes a long time to become noticeable. However, the first step towards that change, leads to a big leap for the whole species.
For example, around 1.89 million years ago something extraordinary happened, that changed the course of mankind history forever. At that point of time your ancestral lineage reached the crossroads of evolution. Henceforth, evolved one of the most advanced early humans. They were the Homo erectus. You really owe a lot of your brilliance to them, because they did something that was and still is beyond the wildest dreams of the entire animal kingdom on planet earth. They solved one of the most important pieces of your evolutionary puzzle -the mystery of fire.

There was not a single species on your entire planet, that could thwart its instinctual fear of fire, until the arrival of Homo erectus. These early members of your evolutionary tree achieved the unthinkable. They conquered their primeval fear of fire and reached into the fascinating blaze like a true brave-heart. But for this to actually happen, there had to be one or a couple of brave Homo erectus, filled with vigor, who took the first step toward achieving their own fear of fire. And as soon as they conquered their own fear, following them came all the fellow erectus. As a result, for the first time in the history of life, a biological species harnessed fire. Naturally, they became superior to all other contemporary species, including the wildest ones. Suddenly everything changed. It was absolutely mesmerizing. As if your evolutionary timeline witnessed the captivating dawn of human excellence.

Similar extraordinary events of evolution in the human religious sentiments occurred when two brave men, took the first step outside their circle of orthodox system of beliefs. They took the first step towards shaking off the unnecessary and quite harmful elements of religious dogma, that were bestowed upon them by the environment. Their minds wanted to evolve into better versions of themselves, with new and refreshed religious sentiments.

Those two were Christ and Buddha. They were ordinary humans who, upon the attainment of Absolute Unitary Qualia (transcendence/nirvana/god – see What is Mind? to learn in detail) wanted to adorn humanity with better and less wild religious sentiments. They wanted to adorn humanity with true humanism. And above all they wanted to adorn humanity with plain ordinary everyday kindness and empathy.

Their attempt to reform the contemporary system of religious sentiments was hailed as blasphemy by the orthodox believers, however, as it always happens in nature, if a change is beneficial to a species, then that change eventually sinks into the psychology of that species. Naturally, two new systems of religious sentiments were born upon the foundation of the teachings of Christ and Buddha. These were Christianity and Buddhism. But, like all of their predecessors these systems are also man-made, hence are prone to orthodoxy and authoritarianism. And when such orthodoxy gets intense, an urge for a new system appears in the mind of thinking humanity.

As long as the teachings of great minds remain as a kind of philosophical literature, which you can read and analyze, and then embrace the parts that appeal to you while discarding the rest, they shall flow pure and strong in the hearts of many, but the moment, representatives of those teachings start making the peculiar claim of their exclusive textual possession of divinity while defying all other philosophies, the world will imminently plunge into chaos.

Thus, whenever fundamentalism, be it religious, political or educational becomes an impediment in the progress of thinking humanity, it becomes a sociological responsibility of the children of Mother Earth to break free from the bonds of textual orthodoxy, and if necessary build a new system aligned with rational thinking and universal acceptance.

Belief is indeed psychologically important for the human mind of general population, but that belief should be nicely compatible with scientific reasoning, otherwise that belief turns into prejudice, which is never beneficial to the human life.

Above all, it is the quality of life that matters. While, Science plays the most influential role in improving the quality of life as a whole, Religion on the other hand, plays the major role in strengthening life from within. In some occasions, both science and religion become expendable. But in no circumstances, the quality of life can be compromised. Religion and Science both must help a person wherever he or she stands, or else, they are of no use.

"Morality" - it is a fantastic term, so much so, that almost every single religious institution wants to claim its exclusive authority or rather copyright of this simple psychological element. The cave-men of the church keep claiming, "morality comes from the Bible", and so does every other mindless fundamentalist on earth no matter their religion. They truly believe that without their holy scripture there would be no morality on earth. They truly believe, without their doctrines to guide humanity in the moral path, we are destined to be punished in an imaginary hell. So let me tell those fundamentalists - You need to visit a psychiatrist, pal!

Here let me make something clear at the very beginning. Beliefs are a quintessential part of the human psyche, but they can be both healthy and harmful. And the beliefs of the fundamentalist Australopithecines are particularly harmful. These beliefs are what we call "delusions". Except unlike in a neuropsychological ailment, the delusion of the fundamentalists is not just harmful for the individuals suffering from it, but more importantly it is the greatest threat to peace, progress and wellbeing of the entire human species.

I am not going to go into the details of which scripture is more moral than others and which one is most immoral. It does not depend on the scripture itself, as much as it depends on the person reading the scripture. All human creations, including all sorts of literature are bound to have flaws, because it is the human mind that creates them. No literature, including the ones in the domain of religion, comes from some Imaginary Big Monkey, high up in the sky. They all rise from the human psyche. Hence the elements of the composer's mind gets distinctively imprinted into the content of the literature. So the morality depicted in a certain text is not the ultimate standpoint of moral characteristic of a species, it is merely the textual echo of the composer's internal moral compass. If a pedophile writes a book, he would probably deem abusing a nine year old as morally justified. On the other hand, if the book is written by, say Tolstoy, it would have a completely reformed depiction of morality, ethics and human principles. The depiction of morality by Tolstoy can be something that the human civilization can look up to and expect to march ahead towards becoming less primitive. But a pedophile's subjective morality would only drag the human civilization back to the days in the wilderness.

So, where does morality come from exactly? I will tell you where it comes from in a little while, but before that let me focus on where it does not come from. Morality does not come from the Bible. Morality does not come from the Quran. Morality does not come from the Torah. Morality does not come from the Vedas. This beautiful mental element which we call morality, does not come from any scripture, any institution or any God. Morality is born in the human brain, from the electrical impulses among the neurons. Morality like any other mental element, such as love, peace, orgasm, rage or hatred, is simply the expression of electrochemical impulses. These impulses in our brain define who we are, what we are, how we feel, how we think, how we behave and how we distinguish between right and wrong, and good and evil. In fact, we our the impulses within our brain. If you mess with even a tiny portion of the neural circuits constantly sharing electrochemical information among each other, it would radically alter your personality. It can alter your entire identity.

Part of that identity are your moral characteristics. These along with other analytical traits of your mind, are distinct creations of the frontal lobes of your brain. This is the region that is most responsible for making us a uniquely intelligent and wise species. This is the part that gives you the sense of an internal moral compass, based on all the available data. It is here that your innate primitive urges and instinctual responses born from the limbic system, are filtered according to the norms of the society as well as your internal ethical elements. Therefore, when a person thinks and behaves as a civilized human being, he or she is doing so because of the civilized elements within him or her, not because of some book, even though the book may have certain influence on that behavior. Burn all the scriptures in the world, still morality will remain intact. But mess with the frontal lobes, or to be specific the prefrontal cortex, of all the humans in the world, and you would inadvertantly jeopardize the intellectual faculties of the entire human species including morality.

To quote from my book "Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality"

"Morality does not come to this mortal world from some imaginary paradise. It rises from the neurons of mortal humans to aid in the process of a healthy conduct in both personal and social life of the mortal humans. Hence, it is the existential responsibility of the humans to reconstruct the moral parameters of a time based on the advancements and achievements of that time."

All kinds of external information regardless of where they come from, do engage in the shaping of a person's neural network of moral characteristics as well as other mental features. The environment we live in, has a deep impact over our psyche, but for the human civilization to keep on moving forward in the path of progress all environmental information must be scrutinized by our internal civilized faculties. Nothing from the external world as well as the internal one, should be accepted to be true, good and healthy, unless it passes the test of reasoning.


Further Reading
Principia Humanitas
Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality
Illusion of Religion: A Treatise on Religious Fundamentalism

People often ask me – what is my work about? I tell them – I study humans – I study how they think, how they feel, how they behave and why. This answer probably would induce another question in your mind, which is – “how does this apply to my personal life?” So, the real question here is – how does the understanding of the mind, which essentially is the understanding of brain functions in a large scale, can effect and change human life? How can the understanding of the mind be applied by the lay-person – the non-scientist, in his or her life, to live better, with friends, family and co-workers?

These are the questions, which I attempted to address in one of my works, entitled “What is Mind?” I concocted various thought experiments to elucidate answers to such questions among other philosophical ones? So, in this piece, we are going to take a look, at two excerpts from the book, which are most appropriate in this context. First let’s bring up an excerpt to shed some light on how our behavioral capacities and traits can alter radically based on internal and external conditions.

Excerpt 1 from What is Mind?:

Imagine yourself having a fight with your romantic partner. The tension of the situation makes your limbic system run at full throttle and you become flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenalin. The high levels of these chemicals suddenly make you so damn angry, that you burst out in front of your partner saying, “I wish you die, so that I can have some peace in my life”. Given the stress of the situation through highly active limbic system, your PFC loses its freedom to take the right decision and you burst out with foul language in front of your partner, that may ruin your relationship. In simple terms due to your mental instability, you lost your free will to make the right decision.

But when the conversation is over, and you relax for a while, your stress hormone levels come down to normal, and you regain your usual cheerful state of mind. Immediately, your PFC starts analyzing the explosive conversation you had with your partner. Healthy activity of the entire frontal lobes, especially the PFC suddenly overwhelms you with a feeling of guilt. Your brain makes you realize, that you have done something devilish. As a result, now you find yourself making the willful decision of apologizing to your partner and making up to him or her, no matter how much effort it takes, because your PFC comes up the solution that it is the healthiest thing to do for your personal life.

From this you can see, that what you call free will is something that is not consistent. It changes based on your mental health. Mental instability or illness, truly cripples your free will. And the healthier your frontal lobes are, the better you can take good decisions. And the most effective way to keep your frontal lobes healthy is to practice some kind of meditation.

So, you see, what you feel when you are angry or sad, or desperate, may not actually be the baseline emotional state of your individual mind. Taking that into consideration, you can take necessary precautions to prevent your angry outburst from ruining a certain relationship with another person. Now let’s look at one of the most significant thought experiments from What is Mind?, which actually depicts the real life benefit of the understanding of brain functioning. I named this thought experiment The PMDD Conundrum.

Excerpt 2, A Thought Experiment from What is Mind?

The PMDD Conundrum (Thought Experiment, What is Mind?, 2016)

Mental health influences your decision-making ability regardless of your experiences. However, experience is what makes you better at making the right decision in a given situation. Here the term right only refers to your subjective perspective of the choice. To explain how experience alters one’s free will,let’s carry out a little thought experiment in the context of two different scenarios.

CONTEXT 1

Imagine yourself to be layman with no notable awareness of biology. You start dating a woman planning a long-term relationship. Every month right before her period starts, she gets extremely cranky like all menstruating women. However, she tells you that she has a rare medical condition called Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder or PMDD, which is the extreme form of PMS. You have already heard all about women getting agitated during their PMS, so you think that it is just the same. However, in time things get real stressful. Every month during those days, she would turn into a completely different person. And one time, she gets so agitated that she bursts out – you are the worst decision of my life. Naturally, it feels beyond acceptable to you. You are a human after all.

You cannot ignore such behavior any more. You start perceiving every single insulting word from her mouth to be true. It seems that it is what she really feels. You start getting upset beyond tolerance. And after several of such intense insults from her during those days, you realize that you don’t deserve such nonsense. You have no practical idea of what PMDD really is, so you perceive the insulting and violent behavior of your woman to be extremely inappropriate. So, one day you simply go ahead and tell her – you are nothing but a psychopathic maniac who just likes to hurt people. I think it’s time we ended things. Here, due to the lack of deeper understanding of what PMDD really is, your lay brain makes a decision based on your limited perception and needs, that you need to end the relationship.

CONTEXT 2

Now let’s run the same experiment in a different context. Imagine yourself to be a person with a hobby of reading a lot of Science books, especially those connected to the mind. You like to learn new things. Now, you get into the same situation and the same circumstances as mentioned earlier. But, here when your girlfriend tells you about her condition after the first month of outburst in your relationship, you get really curious. Previously due to your curiosity you have already learnt about the basic biology behind PMS and how it affects the female psychology. So, hearing about PMDD, you don’t only feel responsible but also very intrigued to learn about it. You feel the urge to know how can such a cheerful person turn into a completely different human being, almost like a beast?

And as you start reading, everything begins to make sense. The first thing you realize is that, PMDD is nothing like the common PMS that almost every girl faces. It is the extremely violent form of PMS, which is very rare. Due to the intense hormonal storms of PMDD inside a woman’s head, her cognitive reality changes drastically during the pre-menstrual days. You start to realize what your woman has to go through every month, due to her condition. A man can never even imagine in his wildest dreams how such storm feels like.

PMDD leads to the worst of hormonal mood swings. Every month during these days she turns into a completely different person filled with hopelessness and gloom. As soon as the tides change she comes back to her real cheerful self. It is this condition which makes her say the things she would never say in a lucid mental state.

You begin to understand that for most women with PMS the hormonal changes are manageable, and they are able to somehow keep their agitation to themselves. But for your special lady, the story is different and quite unmanageable. Most weeks of the month she is brainy, creative, enthusiastic, cheerful and optimistic, but a mere shift in the hormonal flood on certain days makes her absolutely hopeless about the future, about herself, about your relationship and basically about everything that she can think of. On those days her inner instability forces her to hate herself as well as get irritated at every single action you take. And the most fascinating thing about her mental state during that time is that the hopelessness caused by hormonal imbalances feels so damn real to her that she literally perceives it as the everlasting reality of her life. The utter hormonal turbulence completely transforms her cognitive reality from a cheerful one to a gloomy one. It constructs an altered state of consciousness, in which she becomes a different personality filled with nothing but hatred and rage.

She becomes absolutely blind to all the cheerful moments of her life. And she gets so restless that she explodes with insulting words towards you. Over time, you learn that the best to do in this situation is to do nothing and just be there with her. And every time she gets cranky, you simply learn to remain patient and unaffected by her words. Every month, once the hormonal storm wears off, she comes back to her original sunny state. In time, you grow more attachment for her, and she even becomes fonder of you, because you are always there for her, even when she is mad as hell. Thus, you don’t ever feel to leave her, rather together you stay forever and beyond.

ANALYSIS

In both contexts, you had two available options to choose from – leave or stay. Yet, you made totally opposite decisions in exactly the same circumstances. The only thing that was different is your understanding and experience.

In the first context, you were a layman with a general view of the world. You perceived everything in a generalized manner, with no further need of your own to explore and have deeper understanding of a phenomenon. Hence, when it came to decide whether to leave or to stay in the relationship, your brain made the decision based on your generalized understanding of everything, and you willfully preferred to leave your woman in the pursuit of a better prize, with less crankiness.

In the second context, you had a better grip over natural phenomena. Moreover, you had the curiosity to understand things, in a better way than the general public. And your understanding allowed you to try seeing the world from your woman’s perspective. And the more you tried, the better you became at being next to her when she needed you the most and hated you at the same time. You got experienced at it.

Naturally, the thought of leaving her, never occurred in your mind. And even if it did, you brushed off as the spur of the moment. Because your PFC already had sufficient data on the situation to analyze and come up with a positive outcome. Your experience here served as the very foundation, of your willful support towards your woman.

Each emotional impulse, each thought, each behavioral expression, has a neurological basis. Understanding these bases can redefine how we look at a person, how we look at a certain behavior of that person, how we look at a certain emotional impulse or behavioral expression of ourselves, and then to choose whether or not to accept it as our usual characteristic. And this very looking can change how we see our lives, how we live our lives, and how we see the world which we live in. In this looking lies the true key to contentment. In this looking, lie precious jewels of graceful living.





Recommended Reading

What is Mind?

BRAIN means Benevolent Reformer
Applying Information Nobly.
DATA means Determined Action
of Transformative Awareness.

Information Technology is primitive IT,
Civilized IT means Informed Transformation.
Heuristic and holistic can never go together,
Shortcuts only obstruct the rise of realization.

Electronics means electron artistry.
Chemistry is an art of bonding.
Mathematics is the art of numbers,
Evolution is the art of correcting.

Society without science dumps the world in stoneage,
Science devoid of society shoves the mind into iceage.

6. What is perfection?
Perfection is imperfections we’ve made peace with.
…
13. What is nature?
Nature is order within chaos.
14. What is order?
Order is but friendship with chaos.
15. What is chaos?
Chaos is order we are yet to understand.
…
21. What is knowledge?
Knowledge is ignorance we’ve chosen to correct.
22. What is choice?
Choice is the fulcrum of freedom.
23. What is freedom?
Freedom is the fulcrum of responsibility.
24. What is responsibility?
Responsibility is the act of backbone.
25. What is backbone?
Backbone is more than a stick to hang your head.
26. What is the head?
Head is the mightiest carrier of progress.
27. What is progress?
Progress is much more than mere functioning of nuts
and bolts.
28. What are nuts and bolts?
Nuts and bolts are our greatest defense against
unforeseen terrors of nature, on earth and beyond.
…
53. What is heritage?
Heritage, in moderation, is an aid to growth,
unmoderated, poison.
…
57. What is death?
Death is but the fear of life.
58. What is fear?
Fear is but memory of our animal past.
59. What is memory?
Memory is the fabric of time.
60. What is time?
Time is the meaning behind moments.
…
78. What is curiosity?
Curiosity is a challenge to superstition.
79. What is superstition?
Superstition is nature’s antidote to the insecurity of
the unknown.
80. What is insecurity?
Insecurity is wisdom of the jungle against possible
predatory attack.
81. What is wisdom?
Wisdom is the result of travel in mind, not in time or
space.

Time is a necessary illusion,
forged from the fabric of memory,
meant for adding coherence to life,
so that you’re mindful of your duty.

Body cannot survive in the vacuum of space,
Mind cannot survive in the vacuum of time.
Brain cannot survive in the vacuum of skull,
So it floats about in the fluid of spine.

Memory makes the past, memory makes future,
Memory is the bedrock of the time psyche.
Physical time is irrelevant to the mind,
Mind creates its own domain of temporality.

Time is a myth, that aids us survive.
Master the myth, o divine maker –
Time and tide are born inside!

Brain is there to think human,
Heart is there to feel human.
Eyes are there to see human,
Hands are there to be human.

En büyük niyet nezakettir,
En büyük inanç iyiliktir.
En büyük hikmet hizmettir,
En büyük eğitim insanlıktır.

Kindness is intention absolute,
Goodness is belief absolute.
Service is wisdom absolute,
Humanity is education absolute.

Consciousness contains the cosmos,
cosmos contains consciousness,
all rooted in specks of jelly,
firing in frenzy inside our head.

When neurons fire, we see light,
lack of oxygen conjures a tunnel.
Nearing death, hallucinogens kick in,
thus we experience kingdoms mythical.

Neurons forge the fabric of reality,
within neurons our paradise is born.
Neurons concoct our fabled purgatory,
thus our strong beliefs rule perception.

Neurons are the birthplace of order,
within neurons order comes to end.
Neurons are the root of mindlessness,
as well as the instrument of mend.