Is the brain just a receiver for signals from the soul?

Does Occam's razor make this hypothesis superfluous? I propose that we don't need the concept of the brain as a transceiver, sending and receiving signals to and from a separate, discarnate entity called mind, in order to make sense of anything for which we don't already have simpler, more likely explanations.

To be sure I understand what you are stating, the brain is the cause of all thoughts and consciousness and does not need a mind or spirit to generate thoughts or consciousness? If thats the case then its pretty much back to the same old argument for those that believe in spirit and those that dont. Can it ever be proven that spirit exist? I dont know. Is there evidence that spirit exist? I think so.

Is there any direct evidence that the brain can act as a transceiver of this kind?

I think there is plenty of evidence but evidence is not proof. One need only look at quantum physics for evidence.

Could, for example, a receiving apparatus of some type be devised to intercept signals traveling between minds and brains

I dont know but it is a facinating thought.

I dont know if you are familiar with remote viewing or not, but from what reading I have done on it the one common theme is that there is a universal consciousness that the viewers access when doing rv. So that implies to me atleast the brain of the rv'ers is receiving a signal from somewhere and again there is a consciousness that is seperate from the body. The Global Consciousness Project at Princeton University is another interesting aspect implying that consciousness can effect matter at a distance.
noosphere.princeton.edu...

Interesting thread.

I suppose I would describe myself as a Taoist. I've always been attracted to the cleanliness and simplicity of Taoist thought, and over the past few years I've been practicing (on and off - and at the moment, more in the breach than the observance) t'ai chi and its associated meditative practices.

One of the things I like about Taoism is that it's not "moral" or "prescriptive" in the sense that Western religions are. It's more like, if you get healthy, you'll tend to do the "right" thing... except there is no "right thing". It's kind of hard to explain... but the point is, there are no commandments, and there is no original sin. If, on the other hand, you want to become healthier mentally, physically and spiritually, there are some practical (and rather difficult) exercises you can do that will help.

The Taoist take on all this is that we have eight bodies, all of which coexist on gradually more refined levels of "reality" (whatever that means). They are all interconnected and influence each other.

The first body is the one we're all aware of, the physical body. In order to tread the Taoist path, you first start by sorting out your physical problems with the gross movements of t'ai chi. This however is an iterative process, and as you deal with more refined levels, physical issues may arise.

The second level is the "chi body" aka in the west as the "aura". This is the level that acupuncture works on. Standing meditation practices allow you to clear areas of "stuck" chi, which feeds back into increased health on the physical level. As you work through problems in these bodies you may find that you interact with the

Third level, which is the "emotional" body. How we handle our emotions is through varying the level of tension in the physical body - hence interaction continues as you clear emotional blockages.

The fourth body is the "intellectual body" which allows you to understand and analyse situations and evaluate truth and falsity. You have to have all of these four bodies in pretty good working order before you start activating the higher functions.

The fifth body is the "psychic" body. This is the level of intuition, of being able to dip into the universe's total sum of knowledge and accessing the information you need. Naturally, there is so much contained here that a sound emotional and intellectual grasp is vital or you are lost in a welter of true or false information without a compass to guide you.

The sixth body is the body of manifestation. This is the ability to influence events at a distance so that things "just work out". The use of affirmations and positive thinking in the West is one of the attributes of this body.

The seventh body is the body of individuation. I don't understand this too well (I only really understand the first two or three levels on a personal basis) but it seems to be that which encompasses everything else in you and sets you apart as an individual. I'm sorry that this isn't very satisfactory but I'm doing this from memory.

The eighth body is the body of the Tao, and is the thing that allows you to merge with the Universe. Obviously this is the most heavy-duty meditational activity and, frankly, I have only the vaguest understanding of what this means.

Why pay any attention to any of this abstruse stuff?

Good question... well... all I can say is that I've learned a lot, on a mental, physical and spiritual (though I hate THAT word and find it's mostly used by pretentious AHs) level from my t'ai chi teachers. In particular I'd recommend this guy, with whom I studied for one memorable week. I did a course called "opening the energy gates of the body", and the thing about Bruce is that when he teaches the course, he literally opens each of the energy points he's talking about for you by direct transmission.

What this means in practice is that you are one of perhaps 200 people standing in a room. Bruce is on a small dais at one end. You all assume as correct a standing meditation posture as you can muster, and Bruce will pick a particular energy gate, and transmit its location to you. For example, there are energy gates on the inner face of each shoulderblade. Just take a moment and see if you can FEEL your shoulderblades. From the inside, not using your hands, dummy! No, I couldn't, either, much less particular points on the inside face of each one.

Nonetheless, when Bruce started transmitting, #### me if I couldn't feel a fizzing vibration in exactly those spots. In previous lessons with other teachers I'd noticed I got more out of the exercises when they were around, and one of them does transmit to some extent - but when Bruce does it, you're really not in any doubt. When he was working on the energies of the spine, I swear to (your non-existent) God it felt like someone was pushing a metal rod down the inside of my spinal cord. It didn't hurt, it just felt like real pressure - but it did feel distinctly metallic. Go figure. A couple of years later I found out that the elemental energy associated with the brain and spine is metal.

I know how this sounds. All I can say is that this is my personal experience, and I'm not here to BS. And Bruce can simply DO STUFF that other people can't - and indeed think of as physically impossible. It is for these reasons that I give his opinions on the Taoist "eight body" model more weight than those who just quote scripture. Plus, it makes sense to me from my own experiences in life.

Taoists, btw, don't really believe in a "soul" as such. There's a process that you can go through (if you have the will, time and energy) to become immortal, however. This is not physical immortality - it's to do with solidifying other aspects of you so that when you physically die you can still go on as an entity, carrying your memories and intellect with you. Not too many manage this, however, although memory fragments may be incorporated into other living beings giving rise to stories of reincarnation.

That's the Taoist line as I understand it. How much of it I believe I'm not sure myself, but in my experience they know how to get some really good practical results. I know that the practices, when I do them (inertia! damn you, inertia, fickle jade!) make a big difference to me mentally and physically.

rich23,

Very interesting post.

I dont know anything about taosim but from what you described its sounds facinating.
In my own personal journey I have come to understand that we indeed are all a connected consciousness and this consciousness is what creates our physical reality or illusion and our true reality lies beyond this physical density or vibration.

I think quantum entanglement is the scientific answer for what you described happend to you at the seminar and the reason I think he was able to do what he did is again that all consciousness is conntected or entangled or one.....whatever you want to call it.

From a subjective point of view, the manifestations of life energy can have various different "feels". I used to think that what I've heard referred to as "five element chi gung" (chi gung or nei gung being the manipulation of internal chi through meditation) was a purely metaphysical concept. Now I think that the energies are described quite accurately in terms of their somatic sensations: metal feels metallic, fire burns, water cools and flows to its own level, and so on. At one point in my own experimental meditations I actually felt as if a huge piece of wood was forcing its way up my throat and inside my tongue - those parts of my body felt like wood.

There are self-styled skeptics who dismiss reports such as these as "subjective" and "anecdotal", and who would invoke Occam's razor in these circumstances. My problem with that is that this dismisses a lot of data, often because the belief system of these people excludes the possibility that any of this data might be "real" (whatever that means) or offer valid insight into the mystery of what life really is. This allows them to continue to uphold their (usually mechanistic) theories by excluding the data that challenges them.

The thing about Bruce is that he can do a whole bunch of stuff that people consider impossible. I've personally seen him move his skull plates, for example. He's bald, so you can quite clearly see the top of his head expand by about a half inch. Similarly (although I haven't witnessed this myself, I have trusted friends who have seen it) he can move individual vertebrae. He takes his shirt off, sits sideways to the class, and gets a volunteer to spread their fingers and fit them into the bumps of his spine. You can then see individual fingers of the volunteer's hand move up and down. There are other demonstrations of extraordinary control within a martial arts context that I've heard about which I will not go into here.

This is not normal. Normal people can't even imagine that this stuff is possible.

It's also possible to generate heat. Bruce has known chi gung masters who, on cold days, could kick out heat like a brazier and their pupils would stand around them to get warm.

So in view of the results I've seen (and the less impressive things I've managed for myself), I am now minded to believe that chi, whatever it is, is a real thing. Certainly there are people who use this model of reality to produce effects we consider impossible, yet there they are.

One other thing: my experiences lead me to believe that chi is the medium of sensation. All the business with nerves firing and chemicals combining is actually secondary. This is because I've managed to sense my own chi field outside my body. Certainly this is what my teachers tell me, and my experiences have indeed borne this out.

Another problem I have with the orthodox scientific approach to the mind-body problem is the extent to which scientists are perfectly happy to use mumbo-jumbo that sounds scientific, but on closer inspection explains nothing. Three examples: the words "placebo", "psychosomatic", and the phrase "emergent properties of systems". Attempts to penetrate these words are fruitless and they are just as unscientific, properly speaking, as "phlogiston", "dragons", or "magic carpet". If you doubt me, ask yourself precisely how psychosomatic reactions work, or how the placebo effect works, or how consciousness can arise from chemical reactions in the brain. The scientific approach offers no better explanation of the nature of consciousness, and it necessarily excludes a lot of data.

The brain is a receiver transmitter to interact with the soul. It is also a repository for the past life review which happens upon death. The brain also has nascent functionality which we do not use like telepathy etc.