On my previous blog ‘Anxiety Is in Your Body, Not Your Mind, ‘ questions were asked whether fear could only be found in the brain or in multiple places in the body. As a physicist, I was convinced of the first for many years. During my education at the University of Antwerp (graduated a long time ago in 1984), everyone was confident that we could solve/explain everything only with the use of the mind. And that we should give science some time to further unravel the remaining issues. But in recent decades, I got the feeling more and more that with only logic and cognitive knowledge, we can understand a lot of things, but that we ignore a huge part of our environment.
A Neurosurgeon’s Journey
I read the book ‘Proof of heaven’ by Dr Eben Alexander for the first time somewhere in 2013. He has written several books since then, but his first book is the most interesting.
It is an autobiography, where he describes being seriously ill and hospitalized with meningitis. He went into a coma for seven days, and during this period, he was completely brain dead. No brain activity was observed. Probably only the primitive brain stem was still somewhat active.
After his slow recovery, he was able to remember several things he experienced during his coma. The funny thing is that he was able to link these “extremely lucid and detailed dreams” with actual activities during his coma.
He describes that in chapter 13, ‘Three camps’:
“Was my experience a primitive brainstem response that evolved to alleviate terminal pain and suffering, possibly a remnant of the suspended animation strategies used by lower mammals? I immediately rejected that idea. It simply couldn’t be that my experiences, with those intensely refined visual and auditory levels and their high degree of perceptible significance, were the product of the reptilian part of my brain.”
What does this mean?
Our body can perceive and remember events OUTSIDE the brain. I repeat the brain is not the only place where the environment registers and remembers. Where this happens, I will leave in the middle for now.
Let’s hear what Dr Eben Alexander has to say on this topic:
Dr Eben Alexander links his experience with existence to the afterlife. This is food for thought, and I will leave it open for now.
What’s important is that we shouldn’t just assign sensation and memory to the brain alone. It follows that our consciousness is not only a product of our brain. So we cannot study our feelings only from the short-sighted point of view that our entire ‘being’ stems solely from our brains. Interesting thinking material, but as every scientist indicates: now we have to find a theory that is falsifiable and reproducible.
A second example:
For every physicist, Richard P Feynman is the most favourite physicist. Second for me is Japanese Professor Michio Kaku, Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at CUNY.
His YouTube videos are legendary. What amazed me is that such a renowned theoretical physicist mentions the ‘power of mind’ and even ‘consciousness’ as possible directions to the search for the 5th force of nature. Remarkable isn’t it. Such statements were ‘not done’ in my time at the university 🙂
Let’s listen to the maestro himself:
Even as a physicist, I don’t understand everything. Still, I certainly want to be open to all kinds of theories about our body and our existence in general, which we will, of course, test and reproduce scientifically.
But enough talk, start performing the Tai Chi movements and feel for yourself which things are changing in your body. These exercises always lead to the same sensations wherever in the world we perform them, and we can reproduce them over and over again.
Stop reading and start doing Tai Chi 😊