The subject of this article hinges upon the separation of the terms "brain" and "mind". The brain, while quite complex, is not the focus of this adventurous excursion, for even though it houses most of our perception it cannot be said that the "self" rests wholly in the brain. Thus, we are comparing the idea of a "self" to the term "mind". The "mind" is the part of you that makes you who you are; the inexplicable sense of "me" versus "everything else" that cannot be located by pointing to a diagram of a brain. This is the area in which your true self resides. Which brings us promptly to the point: where is the "you" in you?
Endowed with five senses, and the five ways we receive these senses, the typical being will define the limits of themselves as compared to his or her surroundings based on what we can see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. Using these senses, and what information the brain receives from these senses, helps us better understand our position in the universe. Thus, typically, a general statement can be made that because of our senses, we define who we are. But where in our senses is the "self"? The ancient Egyptians believed that the ears served the functions we now know the brain to serve. But we know that just because we hear, doesn't mean the "self" is in our ears. Nor because we see is our "self" in the eyes, nor mouth, and so on. So what does this say of our sensory organs and the brain, or "hub", which merely receives, perceives, and conceives the data fed to it by the senses? It is believed, by many, that all of these are completely void of a "self".
One accepted theory is that the data we receive from our senses and categorize with our brain isn't actually helping to define who we are, instead it actually works against us, creating a false illusion of a self amidst the torrent of things that are in the universe. It makes perfect sense, day in and day out we perform countless tasks that could be viewed as desperate attempts to confirm our "individual identity" to ourselves and to others. We talk endlessly wanting our "voice" to be heard. We crave the attention and company of others so we may feel safe in a system of "like" and "unalike", the categorizing of others as compared to you seems a vague attempt to confirm that we are unique to a certain point, but not unique enough to be the only one. Take the very act of "blogging" and such social networks as Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook. Here is the electronic means in which we can constantly remind others that we exist and we are important. (The conundrum of this very blog itself acting as one such confirmation can prove to be a real headache)
So if our "mind" or "self" is not in our brain and not in our senses, then where is it? A strange and elusive truth might be that because our body, with it's "ideas", "senses" and "feelings" is altogether void of a locatable "self" (just as the objects, people, spaces, and places around us do not house a "self"), then perhaps our self is something greater, or smaller, than our bodies and the world they inhabit. Perhaps the self that I call "me" is the same as the self you call "you" sense we, like our surroundings, are all made up of this same emptiness, or lack of self.
Calling it a mind, a self, a soul, or God, is concurrent with every civilization in history. It seems a universally accepted idea that there is something inside us that makes us different and that science cannot account for. The beautiful thing is that the universal emptiness of which I previously spoke
is what makes us all different. For we only know who or what we are in relation to someone, or something else. So we name it, we believe it, we live it, and try really hard to forget that we are all the same, that we, like everything in creation, are all one.
Labels: origins, rantings, writings
