“Everything we think, feel, and do – everything that makes us who we are – comes from the brain. We are our brains.” Barbara K. Lipska, The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind.
Lipska’s book is a fascinating and horrifying read about a woman in her early 60’s whose brain was invaded by melanoma cancer cells. This began a decent into madness in 2015, only three years before the actual publication of this book in 2018. She survived thanks (in the end) to new techniques in immunotherapy, but went through a special kind of hell to get there. She is probably not cured but only in remission, and knows it. Like a lot of survivors of near death, she is now grateful for every moment she has of life. This, in itself, is a blessing in disguise and worth the effort to give us this book. But more important to the author, who studies brain pathologies for a living, is what happened to her when portions of her brain shut down.
At times, her vision was distorted or her legs trembled uncontrollably, but far worse was what happened to her thought processes. We sympathize with her as the disease progresses, taking away her ability to drive a car or subtract simple sums, but surprisingly, the true horror of her situation didn’t occur to her until after the disease had diminished. Although she understood that something was wrong when her memory or thought process failed, she could not help but still feel “herself”; it was, rather, only in remission when she understood the extent of her illness, and worse, how erratic and selfish her behavior had been. She had berated her husband, yelled at her small grandchildren, and often imagined that the whole world was fiendishly working against her. And even though, as a brain scientist, she had always understood the importance of the brain, it was not until her experience that she fully understood that she was not really in control of who she was or how she experienced the world. It was all, rather, up to the genetic make-up of a three pound mass of gray-pink matter that sat behind the protective barrier of her skull.
Of course, from a scientific view she is right. In my family, we watched with sadness as my elderly mother sank deeper into dementia, becoming someone we had never known. It is a common experience. And yet, with my mother, another persona emerged that was actually more concerned and caring, in its quirky way, than the world-attached persona of her younger self. Perhaps this would have happened in time to Lipska. Still, we do not want this to happen to us, and it is painful to realize that we are nothing more than the brain. The brain eventually dies and rots; ergo, so do we. In light of this, dreams of eternity are nothing but children’s dreams to help us cope with the boogey man of death. We find that the monster under the bed is nothing more than the relentless course of time.
But there is something odd going on here. In page 135 of her book, Lipska gives us a brief lecture on the workings of memory. On short term memories: “If important, they’ll be stored. If they’re unimportant, they’re not tagged for retention and will vanish.” Of course, we say, because we have already been told this. But who does the tagging? Who is the master engineer behind the machine that is the brain? Lipska is a brilliant scientist, but it might be that her brilliance blinds her. There is apparently something behind the brain, something often referred to as “mind” whose make-up has, and still perturbs, the greatest minds in theology and philosophy. Lipska might be excused because the end of that discussion has not been reached – we still don’t know. In this world we will probably never know. So it is that the scientific mind often says, “to hell with philosophy,” and gets on with more practical matters. But while it is the scientist who would be the one to work out a cure for brain damage, it is the theologian who would give us the better answer to who we are. If I had just been in, say, a car crash and had damaged my brain, I would certainly give more due to the scientist. If I were on my death bed, however, I would suddenly appreciate the theologian.
I will not get into just who the “engineer” is behind the brain machine here, except to say that thousands who have experienced out-of-body experiences know that it exists, but to discover who we are, we have to look at something that is both simple and profound. We have to clear our thoughts (if not our minds) of the idea that what we perceive, which is what gets processed in the brain, is all that there is and all that we know. Rather, the brain is the mechanism for steering us around in the material world. It works here and, by-in-large, only here. In this life, we become focused on what the brain tells us, and eventually we become convinced that the person the brain imagines us to be is “us.” Since the brain is an adjunct of the material world, it can only tell us definitively about the material world. That is its programming. Yet the programmer knows better, and is hidden in the mechanism of the brain, just as any creator is hidden, or to be found, in his work. We are given inferences within the brain that lead us beyond the brain, which is what I am working with now. With a little help from my brain, here is my attempt to explain the puzzle a bit more in depth:
We have an awareness beyond our brain. It does not operate in the narrow confines of our material world, but is rather aware of many angles to reality, and is at least vaguely aware of what lies beyond reality (beyond all creation, that is, God). It is not “us” as our brain-linked personas believe. The problem is, that as long as the sense of self remains linked to the persona of the brain, it cannot understand what is beyond it. It is not the brain’s primary job to do this for us. So it is that our quotidian persona is not directly in contact with the greater self (which includes the ‘engineer’). Using Lipska’s terms, our brain cannot see our greater self in such a way as to relate it to the persona, and so cannot “tag” it for our memory banks.
Thus it might be that we experience the greater self at all times but cannot realize it within the confines of material life. Brains, however (as said) are not completely distinct from non-material reality (that is, they are not the soul-less machines of Descartes). They are linked to the greater creation and to the Creator itself. It is such that we are able to have OBD’s, or special prophetic dreams, or perhaps, in a way, special powers of healing and levitation and such that are ordinarily impossible within the ordinary world (I say “in a way” because an outside agency that is available to an expanded self might be necessary, however that might be).
In sum, our brains are material extensions of our greater selves which ordinarily only work in the material world. We usually become attached to them alone and so lose the ability to think outside of them. When our body dies, our brain dies and rots, too. So do (most) elements of our persona that are only attached to, or are products of, the brain (I say ‘most’ because life experience probably does have an impact on the greater self). The problem with scientists such as Lipska is that they are so good at the brain function level that they may not be able to think of themselves outside of it. They have taken the bait and are stuck in the trap of materialism.
This points to the reason why all the great religions tell us to lose ourselves, or to be as simple as children. The more adept we become as the persona in the brain, the more greedily we cling to it. At some level – with a vague sense that there is more outside the brain, or the material – the persona knows it is limited, but this only makes it cling to its limitations all the more. Such it is that religions often tell us that our attachment to our physical selves is not only an accident of nature. It is also a part of an egoistic will that wants to retain its own tiny domain. In the East, this attachment might be explained as the deceit of the gods, or the lie of physical reality; in Judaism and Christianity, it is seen as original sin.
It is the latter that I understand best, in part because it works so well. In this model, the ego of the persona clings to the limited reality of the brain because it desires to keep its own will, regardless of the consequences. This is the willful act depicted in the choice of Adam and Eve to disobey God and eat the apple. The consequences of that act, then, have given us this continued attachment to the limited reality of the material world, including the brain. Because we now identify the brain as the seat of ourselves, it has made it almost impossible to get outside of it. But to stay within it gives us selfishness and misery and ultimately, our deaths. The greater self does not die, nor does it grasp for the tiny things of this world.
But the brain does have us grasp at all it can explain– until the brain dies.
It is a brave lesson, this knowledge that who we think we are is only a mirage of the brain. We can thank Lipska for her story, and hope that she continues her research for the benefit of us all. But we should not be deluded. There is more to all of us than what we are usually told by the brain. There is around it, somehow, an engineer, and outside of this, something even greater that answers only to its creator. It’s all there, all the time, waiting in the wings as the quiet voice.
“Everything we think, feel, and do – everything that makes us who we are – comes from the brain. We are our brains.” Barbara K. Lipska, The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind.
Lipska’s book is a fascinating and horrifying read about a woman in her early 60’s whose brain was invaded by melanoma cancer cells. This began a decent into madness in 2015, only three years before the actual publication of this book in 2018. She survived thanks (in the end) to new techniques in immunotherapy, but went through a special kind of hell to get there. She is probably not cured but only in remission, and knows it. Like a lot of survivors of near death, she is now grateful for every moment she has of life. This, in itself, is a blessing in disguise and worth the effort to give us this book. But more important to the author, who studies brain pathologies for a living, is what happened to her when portions of her brain shut down.
At times, her vision was distorted or her legs trembled uncontrollably, but far worse was what happened to her thought processes. We sympathize with her as the disease progresses, taking away her ability to drive a car or subtract simple sums, but surprisingly, the true horror of her situation didn’t occur to her until after the disease had diminished. Although she understood that something was wrong when her memory or thought process failed, she could not help but still feel “herself”; it was, rather, only in remission when she understood the extent of her illness, and worse, how erratic and selfish her behavior had been. She had berated her husband, yelled at her small grandchildren, and often imagined that the whole world was fiendishly working against her. And even though, as a brain scientist, she had always understood the importance of the brain, it was not until her experience that she fully understood that she was not really in control of who she was or how she experienced the world. It was all, rather, up to the genetic make-up of a three pound mass of gray-pink matter that sat behind the protective barrier of her skull.
Of course, from a scientific view she is right. In my family, we watched with sadness as my elderly mother sank deeper into dementia, becoming someone we had never known. It is a common experience. And yet, with my mother, another persona emerged that was actually more concerned and caring, in its quirky way, than the world-attached persona of her younger self. Perhaps this would have happened in time to Lipska. Still, we do not want this to happen to us, and it is painful to realize that we are nothing more than the brain. The brain eventually dies and rots; ergo, so do we. In light of this, dreams of eternity are nothing but children’s dreams to help us cope with the boogey man of death. We find that the monster under the bed is nothing more than the relentless course of time.
But there is something odd going on here. In page 135 of her book, Lipska gives us a brief lecture on the workings of memory. On short term memories: “If important, they’ll be stored. If they’re unimportant, they’re not tagged for retention and will vanish.” Of course, we say, because we have already been told this. But who does the tagging? Who is the master engineer behind the machine that is the brain? Lipska is a brilliant scientist, but it might be that her brilliance blinds her. There is apparently something behind the brain, something often referred to as “mind” whose make-up has, and still perturbs, the greatest minds in theology and philosophy. Lipska might be excused because the end of that discussion has not been reached – we still don’t know. In this world we will probably never know. So it is that the scientific mind often says, “to hell with philosophy,” and gets on with more practical matters. But while it is the scientist who would be the one to work out a cure for brain damage, it is the theologian who would give us the better answer to who we are. If I had just been in, say, a car crash and had damaged my brain, I would certainly give more due to the scientist. If I were on my death bed, however, I would suddenly appreciate the theologian.
I will not get into just who the “engineer” is behind the brain machine here, except to say that thousands who have experienced out-of-body experiences know that it exists, but to discover who we are, we have to look at something that is both simple and profound. We have to clear our thoughts (if not our minds) of the idea that what we perceive, which is what gets processed in the brain, is all that there is and all that we know. Rather, the brain is the mechanism for steering us around in the material world. It works here and, by-in-large, only here. In this life, we become focused on what the brain tells us, and eventually we become convinced that the person the brain imagines us to be is “us.” Since the brain is an adjunct of the material world, it can only tell us definitively about the material world. That is its programming. Yet the programmer knows better, and is hidden in the mechanism of the brain, just as any creator is hidden, or to be found, in his work. We are given inferences within the brain that lead us beyond the brain, which is what I am working with now. With a little help from my brain, here is my attempt to explain the puzzle a bit more in depth:
We have an awareness beyond our brain. It does not operate in the narrow confines of our material world, but is rather aware of many angles to reality, and is at least vaguely aware of what lies beyond reality (beyond all creation, that is, God). It is not “us” as our brain-linked personas believe. The problem is, that as long as the sense of self remains linked to the persona of the brain, it cannot understand what is beyond it. It is not the brain’s primary job to do this for us. So it is that our quotidian persona is not directly in contact with the greater self (which includes the ‘engineer’). Using Lipska’s terms, our brain cannot see our greater self in such a way as to relate it to the persona, and so cannot “tag” it for our memory banks.
Thus it might be that we experience the greater self at all times but cannot realize it within the confines of material life. Brains, however (as said) are not completely distinct from non-material reality (that is, they are not the soul-less machines of Descartes). They are linked to the greater creation and to the Creator itself. It is such that we are able to have OBD’s, or special prophetic dreams, or perhaps, in a way, special powers of healing and levitation and such that are ordinarily impossible within the ordinary world (I say “in a way” because an outside agency that is available to an expanded self might be necessary, however that might be).
In sum, our brains are material extensions of our greater selves which ordinarily only work in the material world. We usually become attached to them alone and so lose the ability to think outside of them. When our body dies, our brain dies and rots, too. So do (most) elements of our persona that are only attached to, or are products of, the brain (I say ‘most’ because life experience probably does have an impact on the greater self). The problem with scientists such as Lipska is that they are so good at the brain function level that they may not be able to think of themselves outside of it. They have taken the bait and are stuck in the trap of materialism.
This points to the reason why all the great religions tell us to lose ourselves, or to be as simple as children. The more adept we become as the persona in the brain, the more greedily we cling to it. At some level – with a vague sense that there is more outside the brain, or the material – the persona knows it is limited, but this only makes it cling to its limitations all the more. Such it is that religions often tell us that our attachment to our physical selves is not only an accident of nature. It is also a part of an egoistic will that wants to retain its own tiny domain. In the East, this attachment might be explained as the deceit of the gods, or the lie of physical reality; in Judaism and Christianity, it is seen as original sin.
It is the latter that I understand best, in part because it works so well. In this model, the ego of the persona clings to the limited reality of the brain because it desires to keep its own will, regardless of the consequences. This is the willful act depicted in the choice of Adam and Eve to disobey God and eat the apple. The consequences of that act, then, have given us this continued attachment to the limited reality of the material world, including the brain. Because we now identify the brain as the seat of ourselves, it has made it almost impossible to get outside of it. But to stay within it gives us selfishness and misery and ultimately, our deaths. The greater self does not die, nor does it grasp for the tiny things of this world.
But the brain does have us grasp at all it can explain– until the brain dies.
It is a brave lesson, this knowledge that who we think we are is only a mirage of the brain. We can thank Lipska for her story, and hope that she continues her research for the benefit of us all. But we should not be deluded. There is more to all of us than what we are usually told by the brain. There is around it, somehow, an engineer, and outside of this, something even greater that answers only to its creator. It’s all there, all the time, waiting in the wings as the quiet voice.
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