The Brain in Bits

Do you believe there’s more to you than your brain?

For example, take talking to yourself.

GOD YOU’RE STUPID! Didn’t you see that coming!

Shut the frig up, you!  Like YOU knew any better.

Do you do that?  I do.  But who are we really talking to?  Who ‘hears’ us?  Well, according to Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul, when we talk to ‘ourselves’ it’s really our brain talking, if you like, to our soul, our awareness, the true core of our being.  It’s this awareness that constitutes the Real Me.  Because, the argument goes, if ‘I’ can perceive my thoughts, then those thoughts cannot be ‘me’.  ‘I’ am the one who perceives, the rest is simply ‘that which is perceived’.

It kinda makes sense. Like, if you’re looking at a dog, you know you’re not the dog. If you’re looking at your toes, you know you’re not your toes…um…ok it’s getting a little more complicated here.  But stay with me.  If you’re looking at your thoughts (gee I’m hungry, that woman’s got huuge boobs, I wish my boss would drop dead right now before she reaches this desk..) then you know you’re NOT your thoughts.

And then again, it kinda doesn’t.  According to an article I read in the Scientific American, if a doctor chops the physical bridge between your left and right brains, you get TWO selves.  As in,

Pass me that drink will you Ernest? (says one you to your right hand)

Drinking before 9am! You’ll do no such thing! (says the other guy in your head to your left hand)

In which case, what becomes of the True Self theory?