The Seat of the Soul
Do Nothing for the Planet: Part Seven
If the brain doesn’t produce consciousness, what is it doing? The pioneers in the last part left us with the question; here are some of the strangest and most beautiful attempts at an answer.
The whole in every part
Science stepped up a gear with the discovery of holography, the process of converting laser-coherent light into 3D images. What makes holograms so interesting for our idea of reality is this: when you examine one closely, the smaller parts of the larger image still contain all the parts of the whole. Cut a hologram in half and you don’t get half the picture, you get the whole picture, slightly less distinct.
The physicist David Bohm concluded from this that the world we perceive through our senses accounts for only a very minor part of reality, and that everything in reality comes from an indefinable whole. Look at it from a spiritual standpoint and you get something remarkable: that everything contains the blueprint for the whole within it, and that this might be true of human beings too.
Science at the same time was demonstrating states of consciousness through the formula RP = f(SC): that the experience each person has is a function of the level of consciousness in which it occurs.¹ Which is a rather technical way of saying our thoughts colour our experience, that we really are, to some degree, what we think about. Pierre Weil, a prominent student of Jean Piaget, took this further and suggested that people are vibrational receptors: that we can pick up subtle energies in ways other than through our five senses.
The receiver, not the factory
This was reflected in what we were learning about our own anatomy, which, like everything else, was documented a long time ago. The Vedic traditions always identified the main receptor site in the body as lying between the eyes. In the chakra system this is the third eye, and it corresponds to the location of the pineal gland in the brain, described by Rene Descartes as the “Seat of the Soul.” Its main job is producing melatonin, but its sensitive, receptive quality has always intrigued psychologists. Candace Pert, the formidable researcher who discovered opiate receptors, found high concentrations of cells in the areas associated with the chakras, which some read as the beginnings of a very real biological representation for the subtle life forces the ancient traditions spoke about.²
The neuroscientist David Eagleman, who specialises in synaesthesia, suggests something that reframes the whole question: that consciousness, while obviously connected to the brain, is not something generated by the brain but rather received by it. In this respect one could view consciousness as a collective of radio frequencies, available for each of us to tune into. It is beyond the scope of our current understanding, but the idea that the contents of the mind are not produced by the brain so much as picked up by it changes everything.
Even our oldest wiring hints at it. Our hippocampus and amygdala are much the same as in reptiles, and it has been suggested this could relate to the serpent energy the Vedic traditions call Kundalini. This energy is spoken about in great detail, with numerous practices designed purely to lure it to rise. Famed for making those who engage it experience a rapturous bliss, and occasionally turn wild, run into the wilderness and stay happily in a tree for days on end, Kundalini is believed to connect our primitive self to the divine.
How do you measure any of this
Here is the honest difficulty. Unlike a regular scientific experiment, spirituality and its occurrences are not measurable and repeatable in the same neat way, and the question of how we go about measuring consciousness is genuinely multifaceted. It matters that the study of consciousness isn’t left open to be manipulated by personal preference and world view, and the frameworks that would let us examine these occurrences properly are still being developed.
The philosopher Wilfred Sellars suggested we should be liberated from the constraints of data when looking at research, and that we must bring mindfulness to the forefront of everything we do. Once awareness is cultivated we can explore our inner and outer experiences separately, and it is only from developing a mindful awareness toward the screen of our consciousness that we can turn inward and develop our inner world more effectively. It is here, in our inner world, where universal consciousness and unconditional compassionate awareness live, that we can finally join the worlds of science and religion.
Consciousness on the move
One last question hangs over all of it: is consciousness a fixed thing, or is it going somewhere? Many cultures view it as cyclical, like the seasons or day turning into night. Devolving myths, the Garden of Eden in Christianity, the fall from satya-yuga in Hinduism, describe a separation, a falling away from our greatness. Some theories propose our consciousness has stayed the same throughout our entire existence; Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung believed the mystics of the past were as good as, if not better than, their modern counterparts.
But Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber make the opposite case: that our consciousness is evolving, and that you can show it through history. Wilber postulates that conscious states move in sequence, from Gross to Subtle to Causal to Nondual. Gross and Subtle states appeared in us sometime before the written word. Causal states can be traced back to the writings of the Upanishads, the Taoist scriptures, and the emergence of figures like Jesus and the Buddha. Nondual states made their appearance shortly after the Common Era, with the emergence of Tantra.
These transcendent states vary widely in their intensity and how often they arrive. Meditative states might be a daily occurrence for some; near-death experiences are far rarer and more intense. The spiritual paths are all, in the end, grounded in the same pursuit: self-liberation and transcendence from our physical forms.
So we have a new understanding of the observer in relation to reality. The obvious next move is to turn the lens around and ask who, exactly, this observer is. That is where the next chapter goes: straight into the Self.
Notes
On that “formula.” RP = f(SC), reported perception as a function of state of consciousness, is a conceptual shorthand, not an established scientific equation you’ll find in a physics textbook. I use it because it captures something true and useful, that what we perceive is shaped by the state we’re in, but I don’t want to dress a metaphor up as hard mathematics. Take it as a neat way of stating an old idea, not as a proof.
Candace Pert and the chakras. Pert’s discovery of the opiate receptor and her work on neuropeptides is real, important, mainstream science. The further claim, that concentrations of receptors “map onto” the chakra system and therefore validate it, is an interpretive leap that goes well beyond what her research established, and Pert herself was careful about how far she’d take it. Likewise the pineal-gland-as-third-eye connection is a lovely correspondence but a symbolic one, not a demonstrated mechanism. I find these bridges between ancient anatomy and modern biology genuinely exciting, which is why I raise them, but I’d rather you know exactly where the firm ground ends and the interpretation begins.