Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "neuroscience"

I have been asked countless times.

Does God exist?

I'll go straight ahead and tell you I don't know. And you know what! No human being on planet earth knows whether such a Supreme Entity exists. And before the fundamentalist primitives come up with their idiotic argument "have you asked everyone on this planet?" Here the answer would be, the believers believe in an existence of a Supreme Entity. And there is a vast difference between belief and knowledge. Or as most people like to say, It is a matter of faith. Now there is the question, "what is faith?"
"Can we, the modern human beings of the 21st century have faith on an entity, whom we know nothing about!"
And the answer is not so simple as it might seem. The point is, faith, hope, belief all these are born out of a magnificent network of cells, which we call the neurons. And as far as the neurons are concerned, the question "does God exist" is irrational and irrelevant to the existence of an advanced biological creature like the humans.
Science shall never be able to answer this question? Because the very neural basis of the question dwells on the magnificent operation of the human brain from which rises abstract thinking. And the outcome of such abstract thinking is infinite creativity. It is the product of the brain's capacity to imagine things that we cannot comprehend with our logical prefrontal cortex.
After all, being the smartest species on earth has its own existential baggage. Daily struggle of the humans is not as easy. It may seem easy to a financially stable and established atheist. But the reality is different.
To ease the sufferings of the species as a whole, Mother Nature put selective pressure on the neural network of the brain, that eventually led to the arrival of cognitive features of the humankind. And one of those crucial features is spirituality. And this element of Spirituality later led to the development of the formal structure of religions. And these structures further sustained the concept of God in the mind of the masses.
And the concept of God still exists in the human mind, because of its evolutionary advantages. Through various neurochemical processes, the human belief upon God or any kind of divinity, relieves stress and anxiety in daily life. It acts as a natural anti-depressant.
A belief is your brain's self maintenance mechanism. And the most important feature of a human belief is that it is very personal. Each one of you has some kind of belief system. And as for the belief upon the divinity, as long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, as long as the human heart sheds a drop of tear in weakness, there shall be a faith in God and divinity.
Now one might ask, what about all those people or rather saints who experienced God? Were they simply delusional, as the atheists ruthlessly put it?
It is not as simple as saying, they were delusional. What those saints experienced is what we call an altered state of consciousness. People experience these mental states in various circumstances. For example, disturbance in the geomagnetic field often increases the frequency of psychotic episodes in mentally ill patients. And in some cases geomagnetic disturbance can also trigger subtle electrical storm within the temporal lobe of the brain. These storms often lead to ecstatic experiences.
However, till date the most healthy way to experience the divine bliss is through meditation. It is the natural way to trigger an ecstatic sensation in your brain. That's how Buddha experienced Nirvana. While Jesus experienced his blissful state of consciousness through a combination of devotion and meditation.
So, it is not about whether God exists or not. It is all about whether your belief upon him or her makes you a better version of yourself.
Our research in modern Neuroscience has proven that spirituality and divinity possess great health benefits. In order to have a deeper understanding of the biological impact of divinity you may read one of my latest books Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality.
But in short, divinity makes you happier and healthier both mentally and physiologically. It keeps the neurochemical processes of your body in check. It does indeed improve the quality of your life, by improving your biology.
So, your spiritual goals can be as numerous as there are stars in the sky. And so can be your religions, but in all your vivid and diverse paths if practicing religion and spirituality, there is one very common and simple element that knows no bounds, it is the eternal bliss of divinity which evolved in the human mind through millions of years, and this very element enables you to attain unimaginable feats of excellence.

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.

Human mind - what a fantastic phrase! It is the most fascinating biological operating system on this planet, that cannot be simulated on any computer no matter how advanced. Unlike a computer's operating system, each human brain constructs its own unique operating mind, that later on drives the entire mental universe of that specific brain and none others.

In this brief article we shall dive into the various levels of human mind. These levels are commonly known as Conscious, SubConscious and Unconscious Mind.

Now, do not get baffled by the superficial terms. These sophisticated terms only look complex from the outside because since Neuroscience is still in infancy, we the neuroscientists have been busy ourselves studying the neurological roots of the mind. And what we have discovered is that underneath their blinding shine of sophistication, there lies plain human biology. The biology that constructs your mental universe.

In short, your Conscious mind is responsible for all your perceptual reality. It is the part of your consciousness that enables you to be aware of your environment as well as interact with it.

Now comes the subconscious mind. This one is the part of consciousness that in usual circumstances of your daily life remains hidden right below the surface of your conscious awareness. It is the mind where all your suppressed emotions and desires are trashed.

And in the end comes the unconscious mind. This part of your mind remains asleep throughout your lifetime at the bottom of your consciousness. It is the most primitive mental construct which you share with the reptiles. It holds an innate beast that has been there since your reptilian days.

Now, let me tell you about the amazing neurology behind all these levels of the human mind.

If I ask you, are you conscious right now? You'd go right ahead and tell me - yes. That's because your conscious mind is constructing an awareness in you about everything around you. And underneath that operation of your conscious mind, there are billions of neurons working in proper harmony. Various brain regions work together to construct your conscious awareness of your environment. In this whole construction process, there are two brain regions that require specific mention. These are the limbic system and the frontal lobes of your brain. The limbic system is responsible for all your emotional responses, that are major elements of your conscious experiences. And the frontal lobes, or more specifically the prefrontal cortex acts as a filter for those emotions as well as your behavioral responses. Emotions and behaviors that the prefrontal cortex deems inappropriate, never reach the surface of your conscious mind. Hence, they are trashed into the depth of your subconscious mind. They remain hidden in the depth of your limbic system.

Over time the pile of subconscious kinky desires and repressed emotions gets heavier. And if this junkyard of your subconscious mind is not cleansed every now and then by bringing the repressed emotions up to the surface of the conscious mind, then it would start affecting the mental and physical health of a person. All the repressed emotions and subconscious desires in time lead to some kind of psychological or physiological breakdown, if kept unchecked. It is what we call Conversion Disorder in clinical terms. Previously it was known as Hysteria.

We get to know the essentials of hysteria from the joint work of Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, known as Studies in Hysteria first published 1895. The book consists an introductory paper and five individual studies of hysteria - Breuer's famous case of Anna O. and four more by Freud. But the condition of Conversation Disorder or Hysteria dates back to Ancient Greece.

It can happen to anybody. However women are more prone to having hysteria than men, because of their innate monthly hormonal storms. The harder you try to keep your feelings inside, which you think as inappropriate to express, the more vulnerable you become to conversion disorder symptoms.

Does this mean, you should just express every single inappropriate feeling and desire of yours in public? Off course not. I am not a psycho psychologist to suggest you that.

But here is another way to keep your subconscious mind light and with less junk. You just need to clean your subconscious sewage drain with a close friend or your romantic partner every now and then. You just need to talk your feelings out to someone close. It is that easy. Just spit all of it out, whether it is sorrow, anger or kinky sexual thoughts. It is better to express your repressed feelings to a friend for free, than to pay thousands of dollars to a psychiatrist for the same emotional outburst later in life. You can read more about the emotional domain of the human mind in my book The Art of Neuroscience in Everything.

Now comes the unconscious mind. This part of your Mind goes back millions of years to the reptilian days in our evolutionary history. Several ancient regions of the limbic system house this primitive side of your mind. It holds some of the basic instinctual behaviors such as aggression, territoriality etc.

This primitive part of your consciousness gives rise to those emotional and behavioral traits that never go well with the modern norms of the society. These traits assisted our hominid ancestors to survive in the wild. But today in this civilized world, that monster from our primeval past is kept strictly dormant under the watch of the frontal lobes of your brain. However, in times of utter distress, this beast wakes up and takes hold of your conscious mind and responds in the form of fight or flight. And when it comes out, it actual enables you to tackle a life and death situation in a way, that you can never do with your usual state of consciousness.

For example, we have countless reports of parents lifting vehicles to rescue their children in life and death situations. In these incidents the primeval beast inside otherwise ordinary people lashed out to save their dear ones. And that fight or flight response resulted in an incredible strength which we call hysterical strength.

Thus, though I am calling this ancient part of our consciousness a beast, I am calling so, considering its beastly features. And if such life and death situations occur that beast is our nearest biological hope.

The human mind is filled with such mysteries. To get familiar with all those mysterious domains of the mind you can read my book Neurosutra: The Abhijit Naskar Collection.

So, as you can see, all your conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind have their own basic biological features. They function in proper harmony with each other to give you a rich mental universe. And now that you know how they function, you can make your mental universe even richer and healthier.

What is Soul? Is it magic? Or is it something pretty much physical but seems to be magical? Is it something Science can explain? Or is it beyond human comprehension?

Here you are going to have your confusions surrounding the term Soul, thrown away, once and forever.

But before you learn about Soul, I must tell you a thing or two about the human brain's affinity towards mysticism. Our species, that is the Homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago, and even before that our previous ancestral species existed, millions of years back. During the most of existential period we lived in the wild alongside wild animals. On the contrary Modern Science has only evolved a few centuries ago. So, compared to the civilized scientific mind of modern human, the instinctual primitive mind is way older and more deep rooted into the brain. That primitive mind has been surviving in the wild environment for a long time in the midst of fear and ignorance. By nature, that mind is easily fooled by supernatural mysticism. It is very gullible. And no matter how much we the civilized human beings advance in the fields of Modern Sciences, there is always a part of us, that tries to allure us with magical nonsense. Because that nonsense has been with us since the birth of humanity. Scientific understanding of things arrived much later, and in fact, if we compare it with our millions of years long acquaintance with ignorance and fear, Science would look in its infancy. So it is not easy for your brain to embrace the newly discovered scientific explanations of various phenomena which you previously knew as correlated to the domain of the Supernatural or Paranormal.

For example, due to lack of comprehension, primitive humans believed thunderstorms were caused by gods or spirits in the sky, earthquakes were caused by earth spirits and so on. But, now it is common knowledge for you, how various geophysical processes give rise to various weathers, and various natural disasters. Now you know that plate tectonics is responsible for earthquakes. All these things are common sense to the general public. In fact, now you know that the planets including our earth revolve around the sun, but a few thousand years ago, this simple idea was beyond branded as blasphemy. Because it was against the mysticism of those days.

Science has advanced quite a lot since then. Especially with advancement in the field of Brain Science, we finally have started explore the existential questions of human life. We are finally investigating questions revolving around our own entity and identity. We Neuroscientists are constantly exploring the fantastic domain of the human mind to understand what makes each human being tick the way they do. And one of the most fascinating terms correlated with the term Mind, is Soul. The concept of Soul goes way back during our tribal days in the jungle. The only way the tribal primitives could make sense of death, is to incorporate the concept of Soul. They perceived Soul as the breath of Life, without which the body would not function. From this, emerged the ancient mind-body problem. Due to lack of any understanding of human biology whatsoever, the primitive humans perceived Soul and Body to be separate because that's the only way they could make sense of their fellow human one moment walking around and the next moment lying on the ground lifeless. And in order to diminish the uncertainty that goes along with the notion of death they further developed the primeval idea that Soul is immortal which upon leaving the body reaches a peaceful place, which many cultures termed as Heaven. This idea has been celebrated throughout the world for a long time, because of the comfort that it brings. It erases all the devastating anxiety, uncertainty and ignorance surrounding death. Hence till this modern day of fascinating scientific achievements the common human mind deems death as a blissful departure of the soul to another realm - far more beautiful that our planet earth.

And this idea of heaven is so strong in general human mind, that even today, every now and then we scientists come across various individuals who claim to have visited Heaven and come back to planet earth. These people are not lying. They are indeed telling what they experienced during a life and death situation. And here the ancient idea came into action. A person who has heard a lot about the Afterlife during his or her lifetime, once faced with a near death event, that idea would become a reality through his or her neural circuits. During a traumatic event the extremely high level of stress hormones triggers the release of a special neurochemical called DMT, or Dimethyltryptamine. DMT is one of the most profound hallucinogenic compounds on this planet. And upon the influence of DMT the human mind experiences a reality so soothing and surreal that makes the person forget about the trauma almost completely. It enables the person to deal with the situation. And what the person hallucinates about during that times, depends on the predominant ideas, fantasies and wishes rooted into the neural network of the person's brain. So, here the person may not actually go to heaven, but to him or her, the hallucianatory reality of heaven or afterlife seems more real and the actual reality. It's the brain's way of self preservation.

These near death experiences further strengthen the general idea of an Afterlife and the immortality of Soul in the masses.

Now let's answer the billion dollar question. What is Soul?
As I have said in my latest book What is Mind?, Soul is the functional expression of neurons. When billions of neurons start firing, the result is a mesmerizing thing called Soul, or which we more simply refer to as the Mind. Mind and Soul are one and the same thing. Although various cultures till this date perceive Soul to be the driving force behind the Human Mind. Cultural ideas have their own mysticism attached to them, so those ancient concepts cannot be accepted literally. Rather we can attempt to investigate their beliefs, which can prove helpful to our future investigations of the mind.

Human Mind or from an ancient perspective - the Soul, is born from protoplasmic activity within the brain. All regions of the brain's neural network play their distinctive roles to construct distinct features of the Mind, such as Emotions, Memory, Individuality etc. If you turn even a small portion of the neural network off, the correlated mental feature of that region would completely disappear from the person's mental life. And this way, if you keep turning off various regions of the brain one after another, in the end, there would be no sign of mental activity whatsoever. Soul would cease to exist. Because the brain that creates this fascinating phenomenon has been turned off. This is exactly what happens when a person is announced brain-dead.

Hence, we can quite naturally deduce that Soul does not come from any Supernatural Domain outside the body, rather it is born inside the biological domain of the body. And along comes the deduction that soul is born in the brain and dies with it. So, there is no Afterlife, or Heaven or Hell, or Reincarnation. With death you simply cease to exist as your self. However your bodily elements which created your individuality or from a deeper perspective your Soul, gets dispersed into the nature. So, rhetorically speaking you do live on forever, but not as yourself, rather as an eternal part of the Cosmos.

Mankind (not womankind) has slaughtered more humans in the name of God and Religion than for any other reason. Every time, their beliefs are offended, they lash out as pathological psychopaths. And that's exactly what the so-called holy warriors are. But does this so-called holy war really occur due to some kind of divine intervention? Is it the will of what humanity so glorious reverers as God? If so, then what does such ruthless instruction tell us about the nature of that God? What if those instructions are not actually from God?

Here is my question for you, regardless of your religious orientation. All religions, some way or another talk about Lord Almighty being merciful and compassionate. But before you jump into a conclusion that perhaps my argument is leading towards an atheistic climax, I must clarify that I am neither a believer nor an atheist. In all my works till now, I have made evidence based efforts to build a bridge between the ever separated banks of Science and Religion. So, if you must, you can call me an Agnostic.

Now let's get back to the matter in hand. All scriptures, have elements that advocate compassion, generosity and peace. However, they also possess elements of violence and monstrosity. That's an unfortunate and unavoidable fact of most of the religious scriptures, especially Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. Now the question is, if God is merciful then how can it be so ruthless at times?

Despite the complexity of the question, the answer is quite simple. Here we must take not one but two Gods into consideration. One of them is the God of Humanity, which all humans proudly venerate, experience and often perceive as an Omnipresent, either abstract or humanlike Entity. Human mind in general perceives this God as the driving force behind everything in the universe. This God is perceived as the controller of causality in the universe.

The other God is the actual controller of causality, if there is any such Entity. Humanity only thinks that it knows, feels and experiences this Actual Supreme Entity, while in reality, the God of humanity is a fascinating part of the human consciousness. This God is what I have clinically termed as Absolute Unitary Qualia in my book What is Mind? In most cases, without even knowing, humanity actually worships not an Entity, rather a mental state. This is the state what all the religious founders experienced. And those who actually experience this mental state of Absolute Unitary Qualia, become radically transformed as humans. Their brain circuits get rewired as if some Supreme Divinity Entity has touched their soul. And that's exactly what they feel. That feeling has nothing to do with Reality, rather it is all about the exclusively private subjective experience of the individual.

I am not going to talk about the other God, that is the actual driver of causality, for we know nothing of it. The only Science that can answer whether there is an Entity controlling causality is Modern Physics. We Biologists are not the right people to investigate that domain. Our purpose is to investigate Life. And as Neuroscientists, our purpose is to investigate the God of Human Life, i.e. Absolute Unitary Qualia.

The God that is venerated in different cultures in different ways, is actually an inexplicable state of the human mind. In fact, it is the Event horizon of Human Consciousness. It is not entity, but the person experiencing it may experience it as an entity, because AUQ manifests in different individuals in different ways. The storyline of that manifestation is constructed by the mind, based on one's urges, intuitions and conjectures. And the end product of such complicated mental process is a true personal transcendental meeting with God or the Universe, within one's inner cosmos. Such an experience transforms a person radically. It makes him or her, in most cases, the best version of himself or herself. In AUQ a person's true personality gets amplified to an unimaginable extent. So, a compassionate person becomes even more compassionate, while a narcissistic misogynist becomes the specimen of extreme primeval human urges.

However, you must remember that there is no such thing as a God Spot or God Module in the brain. Just like Consciousness is the product of collective activity of various regions of the brain, the God part of the Consciousness, which is the most blissful and inexplicable of all conscious states of the human mind, is also a product of complex electrical activity in various neural regions. It also involves inactivation of a few parts of the brain. In various cases, during Absolute Unitary Qualia or simply during God experience, the frontal lobes, parts of the limbic system and to some extent the temporal lobes become highly active. This complex neural functioning of the brain leads to an amazing sensation of supreme divinity and euphoria. Along comes the loss of sense of the self, which occurs due to the inactivation of the parietal lobes, which are principle brain region for navigation of the self in three dimensional space.

This whole collective mental process leads to the glorious experience of Absolute Divinity. It is the ultimate form of bliss. Once you attain that bliss through prayer or meditation, the ordinary everyday happiness and sorrow seem pointless. And that's the beauty of such God experience. And this magnificent experience of transcendental bliss is the God of the Human Species. All religious founders attained this very God. And due to their unique neural circuitries each of them experienced it in vividly different ways. Their human minds constructed the experience of their desired divinity that heralded the advent of modern religions. Thus at the fountain-head of all religions there were the complicated neural processes of Absolute Divinity. And today, that Absolute Divinity is venerated throughout the world as the God/Yahweh/Allah/Brahman and so on.

Now the biggest question of all is, how can this experience of Absolute Divinity lead to violence? And is it actually true that religion causes violence?

Religion doesn't cause violence, but the negative elements of the religious books do. While experiencing Absolute Unitary Qualia, a person's own urges, beliefs, intuitions and imaginations bubble to the surface of Consciousness and manifest themselves as the storyline of the intense spiritual experience. Thus, all the messages recorded in the scriptures were constructed by the human mind in the transcendental state. The thing which we call "revelations" of the religious books, were merely an amplification of the human mind's inner desires, instincts and fantasies.

Hence, almost all the scriptures in the world contain teachings that are philosophically beneficial to the humanity, alongside some primitive instructions that are downright harmful to the entire species. A healthy human mind is neurologically incapable of carrying out the ruthless instructions of the negative elements of the scriptures. The only way the negative elements of the scriptures can harm the society, is through blind followers of the books. These are whom we, not at all proudly, call fundamentalists. These fundamentalists are the real cause of all the violence in the name of religion. They drive angry young men in the path of vengeance and presents the ideology of Jihad to them in such a way that it appears to them as the last resort for absolution. Their rage against the society, for whatever reason, turns into the tool of religious terrorism in the hands of the Fundamentalists.

Religious faith as a whole induces various health benefits in the general population through complex biological processes, while on the other hand, Fundamentalism not only acts the biggest threat to humanity, but also, it consistently tends to drag the entire planet back to the Stone Age. We the Neuroscientists have already proven through rigorous experiments and studies that Religion is Healthy for the Human society, both physiologically and psychologically. But we must act now to get rid of fundamentalism from the society once and forever. Because, if we don't, the monstrosity of the fundamentalists will soon turn this beautiful planet which we call home, into a barren wasteland.

Have you ever wondered, why do we believe what we believe?
Why some of us humans are religious, some spiritual, some extremists, some agnostics and some atheists?
What is it that makes various human beings perceive different things at different moral, logical and spiritual level?
Are we all merely smart biological devices with various operating platforms like iOS, Android, Windows, Linux and Blackberry?
What makes us so different in terms of beliefs and disbeliefs? And why is it so hard for humans to embrace each other’s beliefs?
And the ultimate question is, does our belief actually allow us to connect with the reality? Does it have any significance in the human biology?
In this brief article we are about to embark on an enlightening journey of belief, biology and philosophy. And in the end we shall discover how imperative it is to sometimes acknowledge each other’s beliefs and accept people the way they are, because one’s beliefs are not merely a matter of ideology or intuitions, rather it is a rudimentary need of the human mind. And for a truly cheerful and productive human life one’s belief should be in perfect harmony with Science & Philosophy.

So, let’s begin with a simple yet quintessential question of human life – what is belief?

Belief is the brain's natural self maintenance mechanism. It enables a person function properly in daily life, without worrying about the true nature of reality. Belief is exclusively a matter of personal domain. It has nothing to do with reality. And conflict occurs when a person tries to impose his or her beliefs onto others.

The human brain is quite selfish. Its first concern is the satisfaction of its owner. The common human brain of the masses doesn't care about the truth of the universe. It doesn't care about scientific enlightenment. It doesn't care about reasoning. The only thing it cares about is survival. And in order to survive it does everything in its capacity to keep a person bound inside a tiny circle of beliefs and fantasies. And every time another person tries to break that circle by refuting the beliefs and talking about Science, the brain kicks into self defense mode. Now it shall do everything to sustain the beliefs and fight every incoming argument with a blind eye. This is because one's beliefs no matter how magical or mystical or unscientific they sound, help the person get through the daily struggles of life.

In short, belief is a common element of human life the purpose of which is self-preservation. Even we scientists often pursue a hunch based on our beliefs. The only difference is that we cannot call that hunch Science, until we actually prove it through rigorous experimentations. There was a time, when Evolution was a hunch or rather a hypothesis in the minds of a few naturalists. Hence we received the famous book of biology "On the Origin of Species by means of natural selection" by Charles Darwin. Then we started to look for more evidence to back up the theory. And over time we gathered a pile of anthropological and genetic evidence, enough to include the Theory of Evolution as an incontrovertible fact of science.

Now let's talk about supernatural beliefs. The whole world is filled with various unearthly and supernatural beliefs, such as demons, advanced ancient civilization, extraterrestrial intervention in ancient human society etc. All these fantasies are the products of the brain's myth-making mechanism. And in fact, it is very easy for the brain to fall prey to these fantastic illusory ideas and conspiracy theories. This is because your brain has an innate attraction towards everything that by definition belongs to a domain, that is apparently "beyond human understanding". Your brain has an affinity towards all those conspiracy theories and paranormal fantasies. And there is an evolutionary reason behind it. It is because we the humans have remained in the fear of the unknown throughout the most of our 200,000 years long existence. And that innate bond between the human mind and the unknown still exists in the limbic system of the brain.

Now let’s look at some modern life scenarios where this ingrained affinity towards mysticism and the unknown becomes a curse for the society. The innate primordial attraction towards the unknown often makes people fall prey to fraudsters like psychics. However, if we talk about psychic abilities, even you have such abilities. How many times has it happened that you think of a word and suddenly the person in front spits out the very word. These are random incidents that occur in everybody daily life. It cannot be controlled or simulated. It is something that happens when you least expect it.

All these bizarre phenomena fall into the category of Extra Sensory Perception or ESP. Parapsychologists have been studying these phenomena for a long time. And the evidence is too significant to call these phenomena as coincidence. ESP does indeed occur. So far we have developed several possible scientific hypothesis for ESP. The most plausible one is that human brains are capable of sharing information through Earth's geomagnetic field.

But you must remember, despite the fact that we have highly plausible scientific explanations for ESP, it is still all hypothesis. We haven't yet been able to prove it as a fact of Science. Because to prove a phenomenon as Science we must replicate it inside the lab.

And there's the biggest problem with understanding the Science behind ESP. Until now we have no way to replicate an ESP phenomenon. Because they happen naturally in the human mind, and mostly in incidents of crisis. And we cannot take the unscientific risk of triggering an ESP phenomenon in the human mind by putting another human person into a crisis. Such phenomena are unpredictable. And in most cases they occur out of the blue. So it is close to impossible to trigger such phenomena in a controlled environment.

So don't fall prey to all the fraudsters around you claiming to be psychics. In most cases they use what we call in psychology “Barnum statements”. Astrology, tarot card reading, and all those hocus focus stuff around you, use these statements. The special feature of these statements is that they happen to be true for almost any human being. And especially when a person goes to a psychic expecting answers to various confusing questions, his or brain automatically embraces the common statements from the psychic as exclusive remarks about the person. Your brain always keeps anticipating a pattern even in the chaos. So unless you have a truly rational mind filled with scientific curiosity it is very likely for you to become a prey to those predators who are always looking to feed on the sufferings of good and gullible people.

However, if a grieving person visits a psychic with the hope of getting in touch with the departed soul of his or her loved one, in order to have solace, then I really don't have any idea how to convince the person that the so called psychics are frauds. Because to the grieving person, the psychic acts as a ray of hope - the last resort to say good bye to a person whom he or she cared about deeply. But for this very purpose we have the field of psychiatry. We have developed highly advanced anti depressants, mood stabilizers various other medications that can help in easing the grief. Now it is up to a person's own conscience, which one to choose.

As far as the human mind is concerned, when it is in distress, all it cares about is finding hope. And it doesn't matter to the mind where that hope comes from. It is all about self preservation. That’s why your brain is always trying to make sense out of nonsense in order to give you a sense of calmness. It is always looking for pattern in the unknown. In fact, it quite successfully makes you see things even in the nothingness. This psychological phenomenon is known as Pareidolia. It is why your mind often perceives a figure in the cloud, or a face on a random rock formation. It is your mind that always plays tricks on you. And in every situation of your daily life you see what you really want to see, rather than what really is.

Believe it or not, none of us is able to see the reality as it is. Your brain has a very limited field of vision, when it comes to conscious perception. Everything outside that field is cut out as background noise, so that you can focus on the task at hand. No matter how much we pride ourselves to be the smartest species on earth, the reality is we are partially blind, and shall remain that way forever. And this partial cognitive blindness often leads to superstitions, especially in times of weakness. When the mind is weak, it is easy to succumb to all kinds of fantasies and superstitions. But when such fantasies and superstitions become barriers in the path of humanity’s progress, then it is imperative that we the modern human beings do our best to shake them off.

Every human being is neurologically predisposed to be superstitious. However, to counteract such superstitions the brain has also developed the feature of reasoning in the neural network of the frontal lobes. But in times of distress, that feature gets highly suppressed by the overwhelming feeling of sadness and anxiety. Hence, lack of reasoning leads the mind to seek absolution in the supernatural domain of the society.

However, those who practice reasoning and rational thinking in daily circumstances, are much more likely to avoid the hocus focus stuff in times of distress, than those who don't. It is all about realization of the self.

The point is, human mind cannot function properly without some kind of belief system. So, for the sake a truly cheerful future we must work together to align our beliefs in the line of Science and Philosophy, as much as possible if we truly want to advance as a species, keeping in mind, that it is not possible for a human to be completely free from beliefs, because beliefs are crucial cognitive mechanism of the brain. However, one's personal beliefs should not stop him or her from embracing the practicality of Science and the fragrance of Philosophy. There should be a healthy balance between the personal domain of beliefs and the rational realm of scientific & philosophical thinking.

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.

What is Education?
Can you think of an accurate answer to this question?
Does the modern civilized society have any idea on the true meaning of the term?
Has the society ever been able to understand the true psychological underpinnings of education?
Or has it only constructed a sophisticated and hectic structure and stuck the label “education” on it just to gain authentication?

Education means nourishing the mind and make it develop in order to see beyond the limitations of current social perception. It means breaking the barriers of the rugged sociological system that impede in the progress of human civilization. It means trying new things out for the first time in human history and succeeding in a few while failing in some. That’s how a species grows and becomes more and more advanced.

Yet, somehow the craving for security has conditioned the society to perceive education not as an endeavor of the mind, rather as a preprogrammed task created by some sophisticated, illusory structure known as the “system of education”. Education means breaking free from the manacles of limitations put forward by primitive ignorance. Yet today’s fake education is gloriously founded upon the primordial element of “limitation”. And the authorities of this so-called education often take pride it in their ship shape structure where they manufacture dumb manikins.

Psychologically speaking, a system is indeed necessary, for any kind of human endeavor. However, the moment the mind becomes dependent on the system and starts trusting the system more than internal faculties of the mind, the very element of education fades away from the system. And that’s exactly what has become of the modern system of education. There is a system alright, but the actual element of education has long gone.

A carefully constructed structure of education is supposed to smoothen the pursuit of knowledge, instead of restricting the flow of knowledge. The ultimate goal of humanity is knowledge, yet modern society has made knowledge secondary and the pompous pride of the system primary. The flow of knowledge towards the mind should be moderated by the faculties of the mind itself, based on the acceptability of nothing but the mind.

Mind is the Alpha – Mind is the Omega. There is nothing else in the pursuit of knowledge. And more importantly, there is nothing else in education. All systems of the society are meant to serve the mind, not the mind to serve the systems.

Today’s system of education in most countries is based on rigorous indoctrination. This is what I call “Educational Fundamentalism”, which is quite similar to religious fundamentalism. The only difference between these two types of fundamentalism is that the later torments the entire human society, while the former tyrannizes the flourishing and vulnerable minds of the young society.

Quite like religious fundamentalism, educational fundamentalism is based upon bookish creeds created by the self-proclaimed authority figures of the system. And this very fundamentalism is the cause of all the growing conflicts between the student-body of the education society and the teachers running that society. And these conflicts further become tools of exploitation in the hands of a handful of war-mongering, authoritarian, blood-sucking, politicians.

In short, today’s modern human society, perceives educational fundamentalism as true education, while the reality is, it is totally opposite of education. Real education opens up the mind to the vast world of possibilities and potentials. It enables the mind to come up with its own unique answers to questions that have been never answered before. Real education creates a complex mesh of neural network in the brain, solely concerned with delicate processing of knowledge, that allows the being known as human, to see something that nobody else can.

A properly constructed system can aid in this process of the growth of mind and smoothen the course of learning. However, the reality is something quite pathetic and of utter concern for us scientists and other thinkers in the field of philosophy. We are concerned because, the modern pedagogy of the system in most countries does not allow the flourishing minds of the young generation to grow at its natural pace, rather it overloads their brain with preprogrammed stream of life-less information and expects them to regurgitate that information in an exact order. Those who succeed in standing up to that ruthless expectation earns the ticket to the next level of the system and eventually they emerge as heartless robots. And those who don’t are quite cold-bloodedly labeled as “failed” and are expected to go through the whole process of regurgitation year after year, until they either succeed or meet their doom.

This is not Education. It is a process of manufacturing computation devices that look like Homo sapiens, and thereby falsely and quite mistakenly labeled as “Education”. This “False Education” or “Educational Fundamentalism” is dangerous for the society, and moreover it is a threat to the entire species, because it takes away the basic cognitive capacities of the mind, which are quintessential for the advancement of the species.

The need of a safe and stable structure is ingrained in the mind as a primitive psychological characteristic. It is a basic instinctual necessity of the cavemen with us. Hence, it is quite easy for the society to fall prey to this innate instinctual need. And slowly it outweighs the urge for growth. It is plain biological evolution. As my dearly beloved Lizi often says to me in order to win an argument, “when Evolution speaks, even the Gods are silent”. And it is indeed accurate. Evolution drives all kinds of lifeforms as well as mindforms. And it is Mother Nature that drives the whole process of biological evolution. Here I’d take a step further and say, when Mother Nature speaks, even the Gods hold silence.

Instincts, drives and urges, all are evolutionary, and as such they serve their distinct purposes in the path of survival. However, these antique elements of the primitive human psyche are kept in check by the modern part of the brain, i.e. the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex of the brain is responsible for the modern rational thinking of the human mind, while the limbic system holds all the emotional elements of the mind, including the primordial ones.

Now the point is, primordial instinctual elements come more naturally to the human mind, than rational thinking. This is because all the basic instincts and drives of the mind have been there since the reptilian days, whereas rational and analytical thinking has evolved in the human brain far too recently. Naturally, it takes a lot of practice and efforts to become a rational free thinker, compared to the ignorant minds incessantly driven by the lizard within.

And that’s exactly what has become of this so-called civilized and modern human society and its system of education. Most of the human society as well as its system of education is driven by the lizards of the limbic brain. Hence, it’s not the fault of the system. Rather if anyone to blame it is Mother Nature. She is a wicked old lady, who always has it her way.

However, if you have sufficient insight into the whole process of evolution and can take into account all its correlated ups and downs, you will no longer be able to blame Mother Nature. Because, even though we have been living in the wilderness and surviving with our limbic instincts and drives for millions of years, we also have received from Mother Nature the gift of a complicated and advanced cerebral cortex, which enables us to carefully modulate the wild responses of the limbic system in this civilized world. We truly are an advanced species that has gained the brain capacity look beyond the basic needs of survival. We have learnt to take significant steps in the path of development.

And the most necessary tool in that path of advancement is Education. And here, by education, I refer to the real education of the mind, that endows the human psyche with vigor and expands its intellectual perception of the world. And in this whole process of progress, there is no place for the fake education of modern society that does nothing but condition the young human minds to become hypnotized hominid elitists.

To quote from my book Love, God & Neurons
“indoctrination is not just demeaning to the human conscience, it is lethal for the flourishing psychology of the hungry, young mind.
The purpose of education should ultimately be the advancement of the species. And for this to actually happen, the world needs the kind of education by means of which character is formed, strength of the mind is increased and the human intellect is expanded beyond its own limits.”

First the world needs teachers – teachers who have broken their own shackles of indoctrination – teachers who can go beyond the narrow-mindedness of the society. A handful of these young, brave and zealous teachers in every nation, shall be enough to rekindle the spark of pure knowledge in the entire species.

Further Reading
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, What is Mind?
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost

"The Church has carried out some of the most inhuman and above all un-Christian acts of human history, yet, it is still gloriously hailed by the majority of human population as to be synonymous with Jesus Christ." - Neurons of Jesus

You have heard countless times from me, that Religion is not a book, it is not an institution, and it is not even a person. Religion is realization of the self.

The Bible, the Quran, the Vedas and all the scriptures in the world are mere inventions of man (not woman) in the pursuit of understanding the self, and to some extent, in the pursuit of authoritarianism. Scriptures from the past have nothing to do with the neurologically created and experienced sensation of divinity and religion. However, all the books which humanity so gloriously worships as sacred, attempt to codify the divinity that is born with the human body and dies with it. This divinity or simply religion is born with the self created by the brain and ceases to exist when the self dies upon the death of the brain.

Religions began as realization of the self, but ended up being retaliation against each other. A handful of individuals in human history, empowered by their own neurons of divinity, experienced something quite extraordinary. They experienced something beyond this mortal world. They experienced being one with an Omnipotent Entity or Abstract Source of Energy. Despite the fact that, these experiences were all taking place exclusively within their own brain, they manifested as extraterrestrial encounters. Hence, the pre-conceived notion of Supreme Entity somewhere up in the sky, got more deep-rooted into the psyche of the ignorant masses.

When a person lacks understanding of the physical universe, and its phenomena, the primordial nature of the mind is to fill in the gaps with all kinds of gibberish concepts that originally come from our primitive days in the wild. And one of these concepts is that, there is a superhuman entity somewhere out there, who keeps an eye on us. That is the most natural knack of the primitive part of the mind. Because here, by believing so, we are psychologically entrusting an imaginary father figure (or mother figure in some religious beliefs, such as the Hindus) with our security and peace of mind. It does act as a placebo effect, but unlike the placebo pills used in our clinical trials, this placebo effect of a father figure or a personal God, has immense biological impact upon all aspects of human life, through the neurobiological substrates of the mind.

In simple terms, when a person believes that a God is truly concerned about the well-being of life on earth, and especially of human life, the belief adorns that person with various positive psychological elements such as emotional stability, in times of distress and a highly functional moral compass. Here this belief has nothing to do with reality whatsoever, rather it serves the evolutionary purpose of self-preservation.

However, if history has shown anything, it is that where there is a God, there is an institution trying to lock up that God in its lifeless structure of orthodoxy, in order to have authority over people and sell tickets to the Kingdom of that God. Thus emerged all the pompous lies about the extraterrestrial Kingdom of God or Heaven.

"By infusing Jesus the man with the divine magic – by making him capable of earthly miracles as well as his own resurrection, the early church turned him into a god within the human world. Thus, the church reinforced the monopoly on the so-called route to heaven, i.e. salvation only through Jesus Christ. And during those days, whoever kept the keys to heaven would rule the world. " - Neurons of Jesus

This way, religion became politics. It became everything but realization of the self. It became a matter of doctrines, books, hierarchy and superiority of institutions. Hence, today the majority of the human population, perceives religion to be synonymous with certain books. And that is why there are so many conflicts in the name of religion and God in this so-called modern world.

A Christian would ask you to believe in the Bible, to believe that the Bible contains divine irrefutable commands from God. A Muslim would ask you to believe in the Quran, to believe that the Quran contains glorious messages from God or Allah. A Hindu would ask you to believe in the Bhagavad Gita, to believe that the Gita contains answers to all your problems given by God or Brahman. Thus, a religion becomes merely a matter of blind faith upon texts of the dead people. Hence, no religion can maintain a healthy relationship with another for a long time.

To quote from my book In Search of Divinity
"It is not much use to talk about religion, until one has felt what the founding fathers felt. Why is there so much disturbance, so much fighting and quarreling in the name of God? There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers, and want others to do the same."

The point is, what the individuals, whom humanity venerates as prophets, experienced was something beyond the laws of their contemporary religious dogma, and as such, all of these individuals were hailed by the religious institutions of their time and society, as heretics. However, their ideas did indeed succeed to influence a bunch of people stuck in obscurity. So these people embraced these individuals as their own personal Gods, and in the mind of those ignorant people, every God must be worshipped with utter obedience. And their way of showing obedience was to concoct laws and rituals to ascertain the divine significance of their personal God in the spiritual patriarchy of religious prophets. Thus, obedience for one divine Teacher, turned into obedience for a God. And in time, it turned into obedience for a set of laws. And quite unexpectedly, one person's battle against religious orthodoxy or fundamentalism, led to the birth of yet another orthodox circle. This happened at various corners of the world in various circumstances.

In Asia, Buddha, a Hindu, stood up against the orthodox Hindu society, and ended up constructing yet another religion called Buddhism. And on the other side of the world, Jesus, a Jew, stood up against the orthodox Jewish society, and ended up being the personal God of yet another religion called Christianity.

The mystics of modern world who thrive on humanity's primitive knack for mysticism often proclaim with utter glory that spirituality is what distinguishes us humans from the animals. But the biological reality of life is, the element of spirituality does not distinguish us from the animal kingdom. Rather it is the extraordinarily unique blend of emotions, creativity and intellect, that sets us apart from the rest of the animal society. This fusion of vivid and varied elements of mental features makes us humans. It makes us a species unlike any other.

There is nothing extraordinary about the mental trait of spirituality. It evolved as a counter-mechanism for the fear of the unknown while we were living in the wild. If we look closely, we can discover the existence of this apparently supernatural element in various species other than humans, such as dogs. Dogs are spiritual in their own instinctive knack for sensing life in even inanimate objects. And in this aspect, the humans are not much different.

However, due to the extraordinary advancement of our brain circuits, unlike any other species, the humans quite unconsciously learnt to incorporate spirituality in their daily lives beyond the wildest instincts of all the lifeforms in the world.

Now let's go back in time. Think about the distant past, when our primitive ancestors were surrounded by the permeating darkness of absolute ignorance. In every walk of life, they encountered something incomprehensible. But irony of Mother Nature was that they had no modern means to satisfy their curious yet childishly immature mind in the face of those enigmatic natural phenomena. Thunderstorm, Earthquake, Volcanoes - all these events sparked nothing but fear in their instinctively driven mind. They were the slaves of Mother Nature, and as such they were tormented in every walk of life by the surrounding harsh environment.

Unlike now, instinct used to get the best of them, back in those days of incessant hardship for survival. Instincts drove their scared mind to forge explanations of paranormal nature our of their fear, anxiety and ignorance. Their mind was immersed in the sea of ignorance, where there was neither a single shred of data available to them, nor they had the brain capacity to comprehend such data. All they could sense with their instinctive mind was the overwhelming abundance of power-play by some sort of force, stronger than them.

Hence, they felt the growing urge to appease that supposed supernatural force with rituals of worship. And they began worshiping all the natural elements of nature, such as stones, hills, trees, lakes, animals and many more, driven by their craving for a sense of security. As such practice grew more prevalent, the brain circuits for such mental trait, began evolving. And slowly their worship of natural elements acquired stronger roots of spirit origin in their mind. Thus they learnt to impose the primordially concocted idea of spirits on various elements of nature. Thus in the mind of early humans, a whole new world of nature spirits was born. In this world, the lakes were home for lake spirits, the trees were home for tree spirits, the rivers were home for river spirits and so on.

Thus evolved the early neurological ground for spirituality, which would later pave the way for the arrival of the modern structure of religion in the human mind. Since then the human brain has evolved a lot, especially in the intellectual domain. However, despite the intellectual development, the early instinctively spiritual sense of a Supernatural Force driving the universe, still prevails in the psyche of the general population. This primitive idea got even more reinforced when a few individuals in the history of humanity proclaimed their mental union with their preconceived notion of that Almighty Force or Entity. Thus, through misinterpretation of individual experiences of the mental state of transcendence, the primitive sense of spirituality got psychologically molded into the modern humanized conception of God and Gods.