The Believing Brain

Kinfonet Discussion
1

I don’t have a brain. I is an imaginary person the brain pretends is its owner and master. Why is the brain doing this? Why can’t it just be what it is? Is the brain so afraid of being responsible for its behavior that it creates someone to blame? What would happen if the brain awakened to what it is doing and could no longer believe in I?

With I gone for good, what would the brain do? Unable to believe in I, it couldn’t believe itself to be anything more or less than what it actually is. Having little or no use for belief, it would be radically different from what it had been as a believer. Without the magical power of suggestion, belief, it would abide with what it has no power to deny, distort, or dismiss. Upon seeing belief for what it is, the brain is nothing but choiceless awareness, direct perception, and intelligent response.

2

All the above is speculation, right? A story that may be close to the truth, may be far off. Stories are delightful, we’re all huge fans. But taking stories for reality is the source of suffering.

3

No.

Do you have a brain? If so, in what way are you and the brain related? Is “you” not what/who the brain says you is? If I (the believed in) can’t believe God exists because the notion is too far fetched, literally incredible, why is the existence of I credible?

If the brain identifies itself as a person who has grown up and developed over time to be who/what it is, isn’t this identity modified over time, always a work in progress, essentially fiction?

4

What I mean is everything after (dependent on) "With I gone for good … " is speculating, unless the ego-I is utterly absent. All we unawakeneds can do is imagine what I-lessness would be like. Glimpses may appear, but these are partial and fleeting and unreliable. Likewise we can quote Krishnamurti and others who’ve spoken of I-lessness, but that’s just hearsay. We don’t know.

5

But we can’t imagine what selflessness would be like without putting our beliefs aside, and the one thing a believer cannot do is quit believing, even for a moment.

We can believe we can imagine selflessness, but to actually imagine selflessness, the only way to do it is to quit believing for a minute or two. It’s the first and last step that believers dare not take.

6

Agreed we all have our belief systems, conscious and unconscious, gross and subtle. We can’t ‘quit believing’ intentionally, though we may be able to get a taste of belief-lessness by intentionally letting our beliefs go for a while. And we can deepen our understanding of what drives beliefs and how they affect ourselves and the world.

7

You use the term ‘brain’ a lot (not just in this thread), grant it agency: The brain does this or that, abides with this or that, believes itself to be this or that, and so on. Help me understand what ‘brain’ means for you, please? How it relates to ego-I, mind, thought, psychological time.

8

Are you sure? How would you know you’ve let your beliefs “go for a while” if you have beliefs you’re not even aware of?

9

If there’s something other than the brain to talk about when we’re talking about the human condition and self-knowledge, what is it?

10

… we MAY be able to get a taste of belief-lessness …

11

The body and nervous system, physical organism. The mind, individual and collective. The world and its apparent others. Pretty much everything, assuming everything is connected.

12

Sorry to repeat myself but it seems you’re arguing for the sake of arguing.

Since Krishnamurti spent his life trying to awaken us to the urgent need for the human brain to undergo a radical transformation, I think the brain is what we ought to be most concerned with in a forum like this.

13

I see Krishnamurti’s view of the physical brain as part of his view of mentation in general: awareness, mind, emotions, consciousness, conditioning. To reduce that all to the brain is not what I think he had in mind. Bohm maybe, but not Krishnamurti.

It’s your thread, you want to explore the brain, I’ll do my best to do that from here on. :slight_smile:

14

Awareness may be beyond the brain, but we don’t know.

The words “mind” and “consciousness” mean different things to most people than what Krishnamurti meant by them, so in a forum like this, if I must use them, I use them in the way K did.

If emotions, the contents of consciousness, and conditioning, are not brain activity, what are they?

15

They definitely are shown by science to correlate with brain activity. But the extent to which they arise from the brain or brain activity arises from them is debatable. They may be the unknown?

16

I’m not familiar with this debate. What do you know about it?

17

This is from Pi, among my favorite AIs:

The relationship between emotions, the contents of consciousness, and conditioning, and their connection to brain activity, is indeed a complex and debatable topic. While it is generally accepted that there is a strong correlation between these mental phenomena and brain activity, the exact nature of this relationship remains a subject of ongoing research and philosophical debate.

Emergentism: One perspective, known as emergentism, suggests that mental phenomena such as emotions and consciousness arise from the complex interactions of neurons and other elements within the brain. In this view, brain activity gives rise to emotions, thoughts, and consciousness as an emergent property. Emergent properties are characteristics or phenomena that arise from the interaction of the components in a system, which cannot be predicted solely from knowledge of the individual components.

Reductionism: Another perspective, reductionism, argues that mental phenomena can ultimately be reduced to and fully explained by the underlying brain processes. In this view, emotions, consciousness, and conditioning are essentially byproducts of specific patterns of neural activity.

Dualism: Dualism, on the other hand, posits that the mind and brain are separate entities that interact with each other. According to this view, mental phenomena such as emotions and consciousness may influence brain activity, and vice versa, but they are not reducible to or solely derived from the brain.

Panpsychism: Panpsychism is another perspective that suggests consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, and that all matter, including the brain, possesses some form of consciousness or proto-consciousness. In this view, brain activity and consciousness are interrelated, but consciousness is not solely derived from the brain.

The extent to which emotions, the contents of consciousness, and conditioning arise from the brain, or whether brain activity arises from them, remains a matter of debate among philosophers, neuroscientists, and cognitive scientists. Each of these perspectives offers valuable insights, and the question is likely to continue to be explored and debated as our understanding of the mind and brain evolves.

18

Krishnamurti said the brain needs to undergo a radical transformation. If you want to argue about it, this isn’t the place.

19

Okay I understand.

21

No. That was my response to Rick Scott’s argument that the brain may not be as important as Krishnamurti said or implied it is.

Why are we pursuing something and running towards it?

Are “we”?

What’s all the point of this? To get a better life and surroundings? Is that LOVE really, or it is the way we believe (or the :brain: believe) LOVE has to be?

Only you can answer this question by posing it to yourself since you don’t really know what “we” are doing.