20230618 : body, brain(s) & mind(s)

Disclaimer:

1. None of these are my original thoughts. I have watched, listened to and seen a lot of useful and useless content. Based on all these inputs, it is processed junk from my mind. Since I can't remember the source, I cite the internet and Google Maharaj. Crudely speaking, I have been consuming all kinds of junk and out of indigestion, I am vomiting out part of the partly digested junk 🙂.

2. I have used some terms loosely. These are terms based on only my informational knowledge and not experiential knowledge with conviction. Please take it with a pinch of salt and chill if not aligned with you beliefs.

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One of the things that baffles me is how limited our ability is to think beyond what we are physically in human form. Ex , in almost all alien movies I have seen, the aliens are  depicted in some crude way looking like humans (and smaller mostly) sometimes geen in colour, sometimes distorted but human like faces , different types of fingers but same two limbs etc. The only real time I first saw someone imagining extraterrestrial life in an unfathomable form and completely different intelligence was in the movie ARRIVAL. Haven't seen anything else like that afterwards... 

Come to think about it, we have not got creative with our own creations as well. Take artificial intelligence and robotics - We have created highly intelligent AI, algorithms etc but most people can't imagine it. For it to be having some sort of impact on the larger part of us , it needs to be stuffed (restricted) into a human looking robot (like ameca or tesla bot etc)

Why did we get a body? If you think about it - why do we need a body? Have you ever thought about it?

The body is there because the brain needed it.

When the brain in its most rudimentary form got created or evolved or whatever, the conditions on this planet could only sustain an organic brain.

To survive in this planetary conditions, because it was a carbon based organic brain - it needed oxygen. (Why carbon based and not anything else is also a fascinating phenomenon - folks intrested in organic chemistry can look it up)

How to get oxygen to it? It needed a carrier (again an organic mechanism was needed). So the brain evolved blood to bring it to it.

How to bring it to it regularly, it evolved an organic pump (a heart)

Well it needed a mechanism to get clean oxygen regularly and remove used up oxygen - it evolved another pump (the lung)

It needed to give water and nutrients to sustain the organic  mechanism, so it developed a structure to consume food .

The food was not always uniform stuff, so it developed a liver to help breakdown the various things consumed.

It needed the entire alimentary canal for the process of food consumption to ejection.

To absorb the nutrients from food it needed an absorption and filtration mechanism and the  kidneys to help purification and metabolism.

Everything upto now (including its related control mechanism of the nervous system, hormones for feedback loops etc., We have absolutely nothing to do consciously. Can you control any of these mechanisms consciously? (there is always an argument that yogis/ monks/ sadhus/ siddhapurushas etc. can do it. That is probably less than 0.0001% of humanity. What about the remaining 99.9999%?)

Everything that the brain needs to sustain itself it doesn't need us to do anything consciously. I think it is about 99% of what the body is for. Remaining 1% is what we do consciously. That is also majorly for the purpose of getting to the food easily and enabling replication of the brain again (the body also gets replicated as a consequence). We have just complicated it in so many ways with social norms.

And the brain does all this mostly in a small portion of the brain (called the brain stem). I don't know what the exact % mass of it is, but I will confidentially wager that is is less than 20% of the entire brain.

(The brain stem is also called the reptilian brain and the most primitively/earliest developed part of the brain, and the remaining ~80% is a recent addition in evolutionary terms)

So, in my opinion <20% of our brain does 99% of the job, without our consciousness interference.

I think (know) that the brain has 2 parts - the unconscious/ subconscious/ automatic brain and the conscious brain (don't think of them as 2 distinct physically seperate parts of the brain, they are 2 logical functional parts)

Which is why (I think), we can be unconscious with anesthesia or unconscious with coma (where 80% of the brain, the conscious brain, is switched off, but the 20% that does 99% of work keeps the brain and vital organs functioning to keep the brain alive.

So, who or what instructs the brain to do all of this? Agreed, its in the DNA, genes etc, but all of that is a physical mechanism that has been set up by the brain only right.

So who is telling the brain to do all of this?

I think while the brain does all this, it is just a transducer for the mind (a physical apparatus that the mind needs to translate its thoughts/ intentions into physical activity)

I don't know what exactly the mind is but strongly think it is separate from the brain. Logically it resides in the head (with its thick skull protecting it) but I don't know for sure where all it resides.

Anyway, I think there are 2 parts to the mind again (to perform conscious activities and unconscious/ automatic activities)

The conscious mind is the part we can easily control. Anything we want to do consciously, we can instruct it, and it will ask the conscious part of the brain to do it bodily. I am guessing that ability is what we call consciousness - the ability of the mind to be self aware. 

However, the automatic mind just runs without instructions. It can be influenced by the conscious mind but cannot be directly controlled. 

If you imagine this diagrammatically as concentric circles the outer circle (or sphere) is the conscious mind and the inner circle (sphere) is the automatic mind. To get there is hard, but not impossible to influence it over a period using the conscious mind and consistent thoughts - constructive or unconstructive. 

Which is why, many subconscious activities, chronic ailments of the body can be effectively changed with influence on the subconscious mind over a period of time by conscious conditioning.

If this was it, every replica of the mind and brain would be the same. But it isn't the case. Every replica is different, very different. Even twins born to the same womb, fed everything same, treated the same, exposed the same environment etc., develop into diametrically opposite personalities! What explains that?

Which brings me to the 3rd circle (sphere) - the innermost one. I would like to call it the "tendancy mind". I don't know how it got there,  what it is, where it resides etc., but logically (for me) it has to be there.

Two very young children given the same toy - one will play aggressively and destroy it while the other will play with it gently and softly.

Two very young children given the same circumstance - one will be calm, the other anxious, or afraid or angry etc.

I think we are born with this "tendancy" mind which controls many many things we do - both subconscious/automatic  and conscious activities.

So is that it. We have a "tendancy" mind and we can't do anything about it? Not really, I think we can change our inherent tendancies over our lifetime but it is very hard and takes a long while of consistence conscious conditioning. Probably the first step is to recognise the tendancies we have and then try to consciously influence the other 2 spheres.

Over our lifetime, the "tendancy" mind slowly and subtly changes and we have a different/ morphed "tendancy" mind.

What happens in the end. Well I think the body, the brain, the conscious and automatic mind (both needed to control the brain and body) dies.

I think the new/ morphed "tendancy" mind survives and goes to find another residence/host for it with its new/ morphed tendancies. Where it goes and stays, how it goes away, how it finds a new residence - I definitely don't know. 

Note: folks refer to another sphere even inner than this "tendancies"  sphere. It may be referred to by most folks as spirit, soul, aatma, etc. I have only heard all these terms but have not experienced it or seen it in play practically. That doesn't mean I outright dispute it. I just don't have the experience to say anything with conviction about it.

So, why did I think of all this?!

Which brings me back to the story of the human form and intelligence...

Everything I spoke about the body, the brains, the minds are because we evolved on this planet as an organic being.

What if the being did not come up organically? What if we have a synthetic brain to start with?

Well, it doesn't need the complex mechanisms of a body to sustain it. Arguably, it can exist as a being without a body. Or it can have a completely inhuman looking body with 10 heads and 10 arms  or fluid from like an amoeba or very flexible form like an octopus to achieve what it needs to achieve.

Hang on, isn't that what we have created and called "AI"?

Sure, it doesn't have/ need a  conscious and unconscious mind as there is no body to drive and sustain.

But how will it behave (arguably). There is no "tendancy" we have given it?

I think we have already created an organism (well, can't really call it organism if it is not organic isn't it)

Have we created a new being without giving it a "tendancy" (with a soul/ spirit/ aathma/ whatever...) and let it loose to figure out it's own tendancy and actions...?