Posts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Self_Controls_Its_Brain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind)#Interactionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eccles_(neurophysiologist)
http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat-bra.htm
World 3 world of culture reciprocal creation . Theory of kaballistic emanations.
Chemical synaptic transmissions-role of acetylcholine.
The private innersensory world of the emotions and feelings.
Unity self or pure ego.
Experimental evidence and philosophic position. Karl Popper. Understanding the Human Brain.
Trialist, he accepts 3 worlds . Cartesian dualism rejected . They embrace monism to escape the "enigma of brain mind interaction".
Interactionism -causal interaction of the mental and physical states.Appealing to common sense but very difficult to prove empirically.
Over the course of several decades, partly in collaboration with the philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper, Eccles has developed an alternative theory of the mind, known as dualist-interactionism. His basic philosophical starting point is one with which theosophists can wholeheartedly agree:
I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition. . . . we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world. --Evolution of the Brain, Creation of the Self, p. 241
Theosophy evolving of consciousness, of the brain-our spiritual ancestry
Theosophy, too, assigns human beings a spiritual ancestry, but rejects the belief that they were created by a supernatural, extracosmic, an thropomorphic God. If nature is infinite, divinity cannot be outside nature but must be coeval with it and pervade every atom of life. At the heart of every entity is a spiritual monad -- a deathless spark of divinity, or center of life-consciousness -- which imbodies in an endless variety of forms in an endless variety of worlds in the course of its eternal evolutionary development. The earth is merely the latest station on the evolutionary journey of our spiritual monads. The first protohuman forms on earth were huge, ethereal, nonself-conscious beings which slowly materialized, declined in size, and assumed the present human shape. When these physical forms had attained the necessary degree of complexity, the gradual awakening and unfoldment of our latent intellectual and spiritual powers could begin. (See G. de Purucker, Man in Evolution, ch. 19, "Lost Pages of Evolutionary History"; The Esoteric Tradition, ch. 10, "Esoteric Teachings on the Evolution of Human and Animal Beings.") As for what happens after death, Eccles says: we can regard the death of the body and brain as dissolution of our dualist existence. Hopefully, the liberated soul will find another future of even deeper meaning and more entrancing experiences, perhaps in some renewed embodied existence . . . in accord with traditional Christian teaching. --Evolution of the Brain, p. 242 Given his belief that a new human soul is created for every newborn child, Eccles is probably not referring here to reincarnation on earth. But if our souls are to learn from the past and evolve, it would seem logical that they must not only reap what they have sown (in accordance with the law of karma), but must also reap where they have sown, and must continue to incarnate on earth until they have learned all the lessons the earth can teach. Thus, although Eccles recognizes that the mind is relatively independent of the brain and works through it rather than being identical with it, his views still remain limited by several materialistic and theological dogmas. Nevertheless, his attempt to reach out beyond scientific materialism and develop a more spiritual vision is refreshing. Towards the end of his latest book, he writes: I here express my efforts to understand with deep humility a self, myself, as an experiencing being. I offer it in the hope that we human selves may discover a transforming faith in the meaning and significance of this wonderful adventure that each of us is given on this salubrious Earth of ours, each with our wonderful brain, which is ours to control and use for our memory and enjoyment and creativity and with love for other human selves. --How the Self Controls Its Brain, pp. 180-1 (Reprinted from Sunrise magazine, June/July 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Theosophical University Press)
_______________________________________________________________
Sir John Eccles
Outer Sense
Inner Sense
Pure Ego
Light, Colour, Sound, Smell, Taste, Pain, Touch
Thoughts, Feelings, Memories, Dreams, Imaginings, Intentions
The Self - The Soul
"The first level (outer sense) would be the ordinary perceptions provided by all our sense organs, hearing and touch and sight and smell and pain. All of these perceptions are in World 2, of course: vision with light and colour; sound with music and harmony; touch with all its qualities and vibration; the range of odours and tastes, and so on. These qualities do not exist in World 1, where correspondingly there are but electromagnetic waves, pressure waves in the atmosphere, material objects, and chemical substances.
"In addition there is a level of inner sense, which is the world of more subtle perceptions. It is the world of your emotions, of your feelings of joy and sadness and fear and anger and so on. It includes all your memory, and all your imaginings and planning into the future. In fact there is a whole range of levels which could be described at length. All the subtle experiences of the human person are in this inner sensory world. It is all private to you but you can reveal it in linguistic expression, and by gestures of all levels of subtlety.
"Finally, at the core of World 2 there is the self or pure ego, which is the basis of our unity as an experiencing being throughout our whole lifetime.
"This World 2 is our primary reality. Our conscious experiences are the basis of our knowledge of World 1, which is thus a world of secondary reality, a derivative world. Whenever I am doing a scientific experiment, for example, I have to plan it cognitively, all in my thoughts, and then consciously carry out my plan of action in the experiment. Finally I have to look at the results and evaluate them in thought. For example, I have to see the traces of the oscilloscope and their photographic records or hear the signals on the loudspeaker. The various signals from the recording equipment have to be received by my sense organs, transmitted to my brain, and so to my consciousness, then appropriately measured and compared before I can begin to think about the significance of the experimental results. We are all the time, in every action we do, incessantly playing backwards and forwards between World 1 and World 2.
"And what is World 3? As shown in Fig. 6-1 it is the whole world of culture. It is the world that was created by man and that reciprocally made man. This is my message in which I follow Popper unreservedly. The whole of language is here. All our means of communication, all our intellectual efforts coded in books, coded in the artistic and technological treasures in the museums, coded in every artifact left by man from primitive times--this is World 3 right up to the present time. It is the world of civilization and culture. Education is the means whereby each human being is brought into relation with World 3. In this manner he becomes immersed in it throughout life, participating in the heritage of mankind and so becoming fully human. World 3 is the world that uniquely relates to man. It is the world which is completely unknown to animals. They are blind to all of World 3. I say that without any reservations. This is then the first part of my story.
"Now I come to consider the way in which the three worlds interact..."[3]
Outer Sense
Inner Sense
Pure Ego
Light, Colour, Sound, Smell, Taste, Pain, Touch
Thoughts, Feelings, Memories, Dreams, Imaginings, Intentions
The Self - The Soul
"The first level (outer sense) would be the ordinary perceptions provided by all our sense organs, hearing and touch and sight and smell and pain. All of these perceptions are in World 2, of course: vision with light and colour; sound with music and harmony; touch with all its qualities and vibration; the range of odours and tastes, and so on. These qualities do not exist in World 1, where correspondingly there are but electromagnetic waves, pressure waves in the atmosphere, material objects, and chemical substances.
"In addition there is a level of inner sense, which is the world of more subtle perceptions. It is the world of your emotions, of your feelings of joy and sadness and fear and anger and so on. It includes all your memory, and all your imaginings and planning into the future. In fact there is a whole range of levels which could be described at length. All the subtle experiences of the human person are in this inner sensory world. It is all private to you but you can reveal it in linguistic expression, and by gestures of all levels of subtlety.
"Finally, at the core of World 2 there is the self or pure ego, which is the basis of our unity as an experiencing being throughout our whole lifetime.
"This World 2 is our primary reality. Our conscious experiences are the basis of our knowledge of World 1, which is thus a world of secondary reality, a derivative world. Whenever I am doing a scientific experiment, for example, I have to plan it cognitively, all in my thoughts, and then consciously carry out my plan of action in the experiment. Finally I have to look at the results and evaluate them in thought. For example, I have to see the traces of the oscilloscope and their photographic records or hear the signals on the loudspeaker. The various signals from the recording equipment have to be received by my sense organs, transmitted to my brain, and so to my consciousness, then appropriately measured and compared before I can begin to think about the significance of the experimental results. We are all the time, in every action we do, incessantly playing backwards and forwards between World 1 and World 2.
"And what is World 3? As shown in Fig. 6-1 it is the whole world of culture. It is the world that was created by man and that reciprocally made man. This is my message in which I follow Popper unreservedly. The whole of language is here. All our means of communication, all our intellectual efforts coded in books, coded in the artistic and technological treasures in the museums, coded in every artifact left by man from primitive times--this is World 3 right up to the present time. It is the world of civilization and culture. Education is the means whereby each human being is brought into relation with World 3. In this manner he becomes immersed in it throughout life, participating in the heritage of mankind and so becoming fully human. World 3 is the world that uniquely relates to man. It is the world which is completely unknown to animals. They are blind to all of World 3. I say that without any reservations. This is then the first part of my story.
"Now I come to consider the way in which the three worlds interact..."[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eccles_(neurophysiologist)
In 1966 he moved to the United States to work at the Institute for Biomedical Research in Chicago. Unhappy with the working conditions there, he left to become a professor at the University at Buffalo from 1968 until he retired in 1975. After retirement, he moved to Switzerland and wrote on the mind-body problem.
In 1990 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in recognition of service to science, particularly in the field of neurophysiology. [2] He died in 1997 in Locarno, Switzerland.
Eccles was a devout theist and a sometime Roman Catholic, and is regarded by many Christians as an exemplar of the successful melding of a life of science with one of faith. A biography states that, "although not always a practicing Catholic, Eccles was a theist and a spiritual person, and he believed 'that there is a Divine Providence operating over and above the materialistic happenings of biological evolution'..."
Eccles was President of the Australian Academy of Science from 1957 to 1961 at the time of the construction of the Shine Dome.
In the early 1950s, Eccles and his colleagues performed the research that would win Eccles the Nobel Prize. To study synapses in the peripheral nervous system, Eccles and colleagues used the stretch reflex as a model. This reflex is easily studied because it consists of only two neurons: a sensory neuron (the muscle spindle fiber) and the motor neuron. The sensory neuron synapses onto the motor neuron in the spinal cord. When Eccles passed a current into the sensory neuron in the quadriceps, the motor neuron innervating the quadriceps produced a small excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP). When he passed the same current through the hamstring, the opposing muscle to the quadriceps, he saw an inhibitory postsynaptic potential (IPSP) in the quadriceps motor neuron. Although a single EPSP was not enough to fire an action potential in the motor neuron, the sum of several EPSPs from multiple sensory neurons synapsing onto the motor neuron could cause the motor neuron to fire, thus contracting the quadriceps. On the other hand, IPSPs could subtract from this sum of EPSPs, preventing the motor neuron from firing.
Apart from these seminal experiments, Eccles was key to a number of important developments in neuroscience. Until around 1949, Eccles believed that synaptic transmission was primarily electrical rather than chemical. Although he was wrong in this hypothesis, his arguments led him and others to perform some of the experiments which proved chemical synaptic transmission. Bernard Katz and Eccles worked together on some of the experiments which elucidated the role of acetylcholine as a neurotransmitter.
[edit] Philosophy
Czech psychiatrist Cyril Höschl (left) and Sir John Carew Eccles (1993).
In 'Understanding the Human Brain' (1973), Eccles summarizes his philosophy as follows:
"Now before discussing brain function in detail I will at the beginning give an account of my philosophical position on the so-called brain-mind problem so that you will be able to relate the experimental evidence to this philosophical position. I have written at length on this philosophy in my book 'Facing Reality'. In Fig. 6-1 you will be able to see that I fully accept the recent philosophical achievements of Sir Karl Popper with his concept of three worlds. I was a dualist, now I am a trialist! Cartesian dualism has become unfashionable with many people. They embrace monism in order to escape the enigma of brain-mind interaction with its perplexing problems. But Sir Karl Popper and I are interactionists, and what is more, trialist interactionists! The three worlds are very easily defined. I believe that in the classification of Fig. 6-1 there is nothing left out. It takes care of everything that is in existence and in our experience. All can be classified in one or other of the categories enumerated under Worlds 1, 2. and 3.
WORLD 1
WORLD 2
WORLD 3
PHYSICAL OBJECTS AND STATES
STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
KNOWLEDGE IN OBJECTIVE SENSE
1. INORGANIC: Matter and Energy of Cosmos
Subjective Knowledge
Records of Intellectual Efforts
2. BIOLOGY: Structure and Actions of All Living Beings; Human Brains
Experience of: Perception, Thinking, Emotions, Dispositional Intentions, Memories, Dreams, Creative Imagination
Philosophical, Theological, Scientific, Historical, Literary, Artistic, Technological
3. ARTIFACTS: Material Substrates of human creativity, of tools, of machines, of books, of works of art, of music.
Theoretical Systems: Scientific Problems, Critical Arguments
"In Fig. 6-1, World 1 is the world of physical objects and states. It comprises the whole cosmos of matter and energy, all of biology including human brains, and all artifacts that man has made for coding information, as for example, the paper and ink of books or the material base of works of art. World 1 is the total world of the materialists. They recognize nothing else. All else is fantasy.
"World 2 is the world of states of consciousness and subjective knowledge of all kinds. The totality of our perceptions comes in this world. But there are several levels. In agreement with Polten, I tend to recognize three kinds of levels of World 2, as indicated in Fig. 6-2, but it may be more correct to think of it as a spectrum.
Outer Sense
Inner Sense
Pure Ego
Light, Colour, Sound, Smell, Taste, Pain, Touch
Thoughts, Feelings, Memories, Dreams, Imaginings, Intentions
The Self - The Soul
"The first level (outer sense) would be the ordinary perceptions provided by all our sense organs, hearing and touch and sight and smell and pain. All of these perceptions are in World 2, of course: vision with light and colour; sound with music and harmony; touch with all its qualities and vibration; the range of odours and tastes, and so on. These qualities do not exist in World 1, where correspondingly there are but electromagnetic waves, pressure waves in the atmosphere, material objects, and chemical substances.
"In addition there is a level of inner sense, which is the world of more subtle perceptions. It is the world of your emotions, of your feelings of joy and sadness and fear and anger and so on. It includes all your memory, and all your imaginings and planning into the future. In fact there is a whole range of levels which could be described at length. All the subtle experiences of the human person are in this inner sensory world. It is all private to you but you can reveal it in linguistic expression, and by gestures of all levels of subtlety.
"Finally, at the core of World 2 there is the self or pure ego, which is the basis of our unity as an experiencing being throughout our whole lifetime.
"This World 2 is our primary reality. Our conscious experiences are the basis of our knowledge of World 1, which is thus a world of secondary reality, a derivative world. Whenever I am doing a scientific experiment, for example, I have to plan it cognitively, all in my thoughts, and then consciously carry out my plan of action in the experiment. Finally I have to look at the results and evaluate them in thought. For example, I have to see the traces of the oscilloscope and their photographic records or hear the signals on the loudspeaker. The various signals from the recording equipment have to be received by my sense organs, transmitted to my brain, and so to my consciousness, then appropriately measured and compared before I can begin to think about the significance of the experimental results. We are all the time, in every action we do, incessantly playing backwards and forwards between World 1 and World 2.
"And what is World 3? As shown in Fig. 6-1 it is the whole world of culture. It is the world that was created by man and that reciprocally made man. This is my message in which I follow Popper unreservedly. The whole of language is here. All our means of communication, all our intellectual efforts coded in books, coded in the artistic and technological treasures in the museums, coded in every artifact left by man from primitive times--this is World 3 right up to the present time. It is the world of civilization and culture. Education is the means whereby each human being is brought into relation with World 3. In this manner he becomes immersed in it throughout life, participating in the heritage of mankind and so becoming fully human. World 3 is the world that uniquely relates to man. It is the world which is completely unknown to animals. They are blind to all of World 3. I say that without any reservations. This is then the first part of my story.
"Now I come to consider the way in which the three worlds interact..."[3]
Interactionism
Main article: Interactionism (philosophy of mind)
Interactionism is the view that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, causally interact with physical states. This is a position which is very appealing to common-sense intuitions, notwithstanding the fact that it is very difficult to establish its validity or correctness by way of logical argumentation or empirical proof. It seems to appeal to common-sense because we are surrounded by such everyday occurrences as a child's touching a hot stove (physical event) which causes him to feel pain (mental event) and then yell and scream (physical event) which causes his parents to experience a sensation of fear and protectiveness (mental event) and so on.[5]
Over the course of several decades, partly in collaboration with the philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper, Eccles has developed an alternative theory of the mind, known as dualist-interactionism. His basic philosophical starting point is one with which theosophists can wholeheartedly agree:
I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition. . . . we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world. --Evolution of the Brain, Creation of the Self, p. 241
According to Eccles, we have a nonmaterial mind or self which acts upon, and is influenced by, our material brains; there is a mental world in addition to the physical world, and the two interact. However, Eccles denies that the mind is a type of nonphysical substance (as it is in Cartesian dualism), and says that it merely belongs to a different world. (How the Self Controls Its Brain, p. 38.) But unless our mind (and the world in which it exists) is pure nothingness -- in which case it would not exist -- it must be composed of finer grades of energy-substance. Indeed, our inner constitution may comprise several nonphysical levels. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake, for instance, proposes that our physical bodies are organized by morphogenetic fields, our habits by behavioral morphic fields, and our thoughts and ideas by mental morphic fields. He suggests that our conscious self may be a higher level of our being which interacts with the lower fields and, through them with the physical brain and body. Theosophy adds to this list spiritual and divine levels, and describes all the different "layers" of our constitution as different phases of consciousness-substance.
Opponents of Eccles' view argue that mind-brain interaction would infringe the law of the conservation of energy. In his latest book, How the Self Controls Its Brain, Eccles, with the help of quantum physicist Friedrich Beck, shows that mind-brain action can be explained without violating the conservation of energy if account is taken of quantum physics and the latest discoveries concerning the microstructure of the neocortex. Eccles calls the fundamental neural units of the cerebral cortex dendrons, and proposes that each of the 40 million dendrons is linked with a mental unit, or psychon, representing a unitary conscious experience. In willed actions and thought, psychons act on dendrons and momentarily increase the probability of the firing of selected neurons, while in perception the reverse process takes place. Interaction among psychons themselves could explain the unity of our perceptions and of the inner world of our mind.
But Eccles' acceptance of the standard interpretation of the conservation of energy actually limits his theory. According to the first law of thermodynamics, the total energy of a closed system (i.e., one which does not exchange matter or energy with its environment) remains constant. Since materialists believe that the physical world is all that exists and therefore forms a closed system, they argue that the quantity of matter-energy within it must remain absolutely the same. According to theosophy, on the other hand, there is a constant circulation of energy-substances through the various planes or spheres of reality, none of which forms a closed system, and the conservation of matter-energy applies only to infinite nature as a whole. Orthodox quantum physics does in fact recognize that energy can be borrowed from the "quantum vacuum" provided it is paid back after a fraction of a second. Furthermore, over the past hundred years or so, a number of physicists, engineers, and inventors, beginning with Michael Faraday and Nicola Tesla, have built electromagnetic "free energy" devices that seem to produce more energy than required to run them, by apparently tapping on a larger scale the "zero-point energy of the vacuum" (or "energy of hyperdimensional space," as some scientists call it) -- that is, nonphysical, etheric energy. (See R. C. Hoagland, The Monuments of Mars, pp. 370-4.) Some scientists believe that "cold fusion" has a similar explanation. (See H. Fox, Cold Fusion Impact in the Enhanced Energy Age, ch. 11.)
Eccles says that the interaction between brain and mind "can be conceived as a flow of information, not of energy." (How the Self Controls its Brain, p. 9.) But information must surely be carried by some form of matter-energy, and if the mind can alter the probability of neural events, it is more likely that it does so by means of subtler, etheric types of force or energy, acting at the quantum or subquantum level. Eccles says that his theory can account for ordinary voluntary actions, but that "more direct actions of the will are precluded by the conservation laws." (Ibid., p. 163.) This is significant, for even if there is no measurable violation of energy conservation in ordinary mental phenomena, this may not be the case with certain paranormal phenomena, especially psychokinesis and materializations. Eccles, however, does not take paranormal phenomena seriously. (Evolution of the Brain, p. 242.)
Eccles is in basic agreement with the neo-Darwinian theory that evolution is driven by random genetic mutations followed by the weeding out of unfavorable variations by natural selection, but he also believes that "there is a Divine Providence operating over and above the materialist happenings of biological evolution." (Ibid., p. 239.) He accepts that mammals (such as dogs, cats, horses, and monkeys) and possibly birds are conscious beings, which experience feelings and pain, but denies conscious experiences to invertebrates and lower vertebrates such as fish and even amphibians and reptiles which, he says, have instinctual and learned responses, but no awareness or sensation. He maintains that the mental (or psychon) world, and therefore conscious experiences, came into existence with the development of the complex neocortex of the mammalian brain, and that the neocortex evolved by natural selection because it enabled the increased complexity of sensory inputs to be integrated, and therefore offered survival advantages. Then,
with hominid evolution there eventually came higher levels of conscious experiences, and ultimately in Homo sapiens sapiens -- self-consciousness -- which is the unique life-long experience of each human SELF, and which we must regard as a miracle beyond Darwinian evolution. -- How the Self Controls Its Brain, p. 139.
In theosophy, rather than the physical world giving rise to the mental world, lower realms are said to unfold from higher, more spiritual realms through a process of emanation, differentiation, and concretion, and all the various planes, and the classes of entities composing and inhabiting them, are manifestations of consciousness -- the ultimate reality. In the words of H. P. Blavatsky:
Nature taken in its abstract sense, cannot be "unconscious," as it is the emanation from, and thus an aspect (on the manifested plane) of the ABSOLUTE consciousness. Where is that daring man who would presume to deny to vegetation and even to minerals a consciousness of their own. All he can say is, that this consciousness is beyond his comprehension. --The Secret Doctrine 1:277n
Thus not only are all animals conscious; plants too have a primitive form of sentient, conscious existence, as various researchers have established. (See "Our Intelligent Companions, the Plants," John Van Mater, Jr., SUNRISE, April/May 1987.) As for the mineral kingdom, "panpsychists" such as B. Rensch and C. Birch believe that all physical matter, including atoms and subatomic particles, possesses a protoconsciousness. Eccles rejects panpsychism on the grounds that modern physics does not admit memory or identity for elementary particles. However, physicist David Bohm believed not only that all forms of matter were alive and conscious to some extent, but also that, at deeper levels, every particle of a particular species is distinguishable and unique, rather than being completely identical as is assumed in orthodox physics. (Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, p. 157; Science, Order & Creativity (with F. D. Peat), pp. 210-11.) Furthermore, newly synthesized chemical compounds have been found to crystallize more readily all over the world the more often they are made -- implying the existence of some sort of memory. (See Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past, p. 131.)
A further weakness in Eccles' approach is his attachment to the ape-ancestry theory. The hominid family includes not only our own species, Homo sapiens, but also more primitive (now extinct) human forms. The oldest generally accepted hominid genus is Australopithecus, which appeared in southern Africa about 4½ million years ago in the early Pliocene. Some researchers have tried to trace a progressive line of evolutionary ascent from Australopithecus through Homo habilis and Homo erectus to modern humans, but such a simplistic interpretation of the fossil record is hotly contested, even among Darwinists. The origin of the hominid family itself is even more problematic. The prevailing theory is that humans and the modern anthropoid apes had a common ancestor, thought to be closely related to the extinct Miocene apes known as the dryopithecines. But as the Encylopaedia Britannica states:
Exactly when the Hominidae, as a separate and independent line of evolution, became segregated from the anthropoid-ape family (Pongidae) is not certainly known; indeed, it is still the most serious gap in the fossil record of the Hominidae. (15th ed. 18:933.)
Eccles at least recognizes that Darwinian evolution cannot account for our self-conscious mind:
Since materialist solutions fail to account for our experienced uniqueness, I am constrained to attribute the uniqueness of the Self or Soul to a supernatural spiritual creation. To give the explanation in theological terms: each Soul is a new Divine creation which is implanted into the growing foetus at some time between conception and birth. --Evolution of the Brain, p. 237
Theosophy, too, assigns human beings a spiritual ancestry, but rejects the belief that they were created by a supernatural, extracosmic, an thropomorphic God. If nature is infinite, divinity cannot be outside nature but must be coeval with it and pervade every atom of life. At the heart of every entity is a spiritual monad -- a deathless spark of divinity, or center of life-consciousness -- which imbodies in an endless variety of forms in an endless variety of worlds in the course of its eternal evolutionary development. The earth is merely the latest station on the evolutionary journey of our spiritual monads. The first protohuman forms on earth were huge, ethereal, nonself-conscious beings which slowly materialized, declined in size, and assumed the present human shape. When these physical forms had attained the necessary degree of complexity, the gradual awakening and unfoldment of our latent intellectual and spiritual powers could begin. (See G. de Purucker, Man in Evolution, ch. 19, "Lost Pages of Evolutionary History"; The Esoteric Tradition, ch. 10, "Esoteric Teachings on the Evolution of Human and Animal Beings.")
As for what happens after death, Eccles says:
we can regard the death of the body and brain as dissolution of our dualist existence. Hopefully, the liberated soul will find another future of even deeper meaning and more entrancing experiences, perhaps in some renewed embodied existence . . . in accord with traditional Christian teaching. --Evolution of the Brain, p. 242
Given his belief that a new human soul is created for every newborn child, Eccles is probably not referring here to reincarnation on earth. But if our souls are to learn from the past and evolve, it would seem logical that they must not only reap what they have sown (in accordance with the law of karma), but must also reap where they have sown, and must continue to incarnate on earth until they have learned all the lessons the earth can teach.
Thus, although Eccles recognizes that the mind is relatively independent of the brain and works through it rather than being identical with it, his views still remain limited by several materialistic and theological dogmas. Nevertheless, his attempt to reach out beyond scientific materialism and develop a more spiritual vision is refreshing. Towards the end of his latest book, he writes:
I here express my efforts to understand with deep humility a self, myself, as an experiencing being. I offer it in the hope that we human selves may discover a transforming faith in the meaning and significance of this wonderful adventure that each of us is given on this salubrious Earth of ours, each with our wonderful brain, which is ours to control and use for our memory and enjoyment and creativity and with love for other human selves. --How the Self Controls Its Brain, pp. 180-1
(Reprinted from Sunrise magazine, June/July 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Theosophical University Press)
