Brains and Realities

Conventional neuroscience assumes that there is a real objective world ‘out there’ and that the brain constructs a world that is representative of this world. But how do we prove that? Do we use our three- dimensional instruments to probe and our three-dimensional consciousness to verify? What exactly is out there? Contrary to the conventional neuroscientific three-dimensional model, cutting-edge physics tells us that the world ‘out there’ is multi-dimensional and not solid but a cacophony of waveforms. The three-dimensional world constructed by the brain is a reduction and a limited interpretation of what is really out there. In Eastern religious philosophy and certain Western philosophies, there is a bold assertion that what is out there is a paradoxical ‘full-void’ — i.e. a nothingness which contains everything. Apparently, this void has been ‘experienced’ by mystics and advanced meditators — as recorded quite extensively in religious scriptures and the metaphysical literature. In this void, space and time are meaningless. The Surangama Sutra of the Buddhists emphatically point out that location in space is illusionary. Saint Augustine believed in an ever-present eternity which was not accessible to humans. Both space and time may be illusions. "Ultimately, all moments are really one. Therefore now is eternity." (David Bohm, Physicist) For a long time it was assumed that space and time were fundamental to the underlying reality; but Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity toppled this assumption. What we observe as space and what we observe as time are now regarded as two aspects of a more fundamental spacetime continuum. To what extent this continuum manifests as space and how much of it manifests as time varies according to the relative motion of the observer. In other words, they are both subject to our perception within specific frames of reference which provide three-dimensional frameworks to structure our mental image of the world. But we are perhaps deceiving ourselves when we assume that they are also fundamental to the underlying reality. "Space and time are like the two lenses in a pair of glasses. Without the glasses we could see nothing. The actual world, the world external to our minds, is not directly perceivable; we see only what is transmitted to us by our space-time spectacles. The real object, what Kant called the ‘Thing-in- Itself’, is transcendent, beyond our space-time, completely unknowable… Perceptions are in, in a sense, illusions. They are shaped and colored by our subjective sense of space and time." (Martin Gardner, Mathematician) Advances in Brain Science Recently, science has made significant advances in studying the brain during meditative states. Using cutting-edge medical imaging methods, observations have been made of specific areas in the brain which are activated or deactivated during meditation. It has also been widely observed that many meditative traditions emphasise the activation and development of the right hemisphere of the brain. In fact, certain studies have shown that various areas in the right hemisphere grow thicker with regular meditation. Is it possible to modify the operation of the brain to allow a meditator to experience a totally different reality? Can we bypass the brain’s constructions to reach a more fundamental reality? It is becoming increasingly evident that we are blocked by our perceptual apparatus from experiencing a more primordial reality. Hence, it would make sense to look at how the human brain processes information to understand better the models that it uses to construct its interpretation of the underlying reality; while being limited by its own processing power and capabilities. "I still believe the universe has a beginning in real time, at the big bang. But there’s another kind of time, imaginary time, at right angles to real time, in which the universe has no beginning or end." (Stephen Hawking) The Journey We will begin the journey by first discussing the different methods of processing sensory information in the right and left hemispheres of the human brain. We will then explore what happens to the brain during mystical experiences as revealed by recent medical studies. After this, we will take a look at what modern physics tells us of the nature of the universe or multiverse, comparing it with what mystics have said about it. We will then propose the astonishing hypothesis that the experiences of mystics are reconcilable to modern physics; and that the brain can be made to experience a more fundamental reality where space and time do not operate. Descriptions of this reality recorded in religious and metaphysical literature will be reviewed, alongside descriptions from modern physics. Then we will proceed to see how the human brain connects to parallel universes and review its non-local nature. Readers will however note an undercurrent of questions regarding the nature and future of Science and how it can be reconciled to the totality of human experience. Science parted ways with Religion more than 500 years ago, shaking-off the dust of centuries of non-verified claims and superstitions. Will it be reunited with Religion’s inner essence and wisdom in the next 500 years?