Connection between mind and brain

So once we go into the subatomic level we actually see that the atom is not really an atom.

You know particles change according to their waves and they are particles only when you actually look at them. So it is considered the observer effect.

And it is really interesting because it means that we have these waves of energy and as we make a choice we create reality – which we do – so as you think, feel and choose you change your brain.

Think, feel and choose those three things always go together. Always thinking means you’re always feeling. Thinking and feeling means you’re always choosing.

It’s happening at like 400 billion actions per second constantly so we’re processing this world around us through this think-feel-choose and then we build thoughts so there is this structural consequence. So thought is actually a physical response of the think, feel, choose. And quantum physics is kind of helping us understand that. But quantum physics is real and is easy to understand with classical physics. So classical (physical world) and quantum (the sort of non-physical world) work together.

Caroline Leaf, Neuroscientist

Notes on “I think, therefore I am”

Original statement: The phrase originally appeared in French as je pense, donc je suis in Discourse on the Method by René Descartes.

Latin translation: Cogito, ergo sum. It appeared in Latin in his later Principles of Philosophy

From Wikipedia: Later translated into English as “I think, therefore I am” , so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed.

As Descartes explained it, “we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt.”

A fuller version, articulated by Antoine Léonard Thomas, aptly captures Descartes’s intent: dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum (“I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”)

Descartes’s statement became a fundamental element of Western philosophy, as it purported to provide a certain foundation for knowledge in the face of radical doubt. While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one’s own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one’s own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought.

One common critique of the dictum is that it presupposes that there is an “I” which must be doing the thinking. According to this line of criticism, the most that Descartes was entitled to say was that “thinking is occurring”, not that “I am thinking”.

View 1:
Essentially, thought cannot end up being the sole provable thing in existence since it has requirements for its own existence.

View 2:
St. Augustine was one of the early proponents of similar thinking. Parmenides 5th Century BC also said something similar.

View 3:
Saiva Siddhantha identifies mind and thoughts as perishing with the body and hence these cannot be associated with the identity of I. The soul is believed to be more subtle than the mind. While energies associated with mental activity can be measured, the soul itself cannot be traced by outside methods.

What if you didn’t have to do anything about anything at all?

So my challenge to you is what if you didn’t have to do anything about anything, at all? Nothing at all to do, nothing at all to do about anything. Yes, make a cup of tea, because that doesn’t give you any trouble; whatever it is you have to do…, but it’s not accompanied by this idea that ‘There is something I need to do to be stable in the Awareness’ …because I tell you, that is a trap! Forget about it. If you touch this idea, you believe it instantly into existence; and then you have to believe another idea to remove it. So why not drop both ideas in the first place, and stay where You Are? You are simply Here in which all that arises for You, including the sense of spirituality…, forget about spirituality then. Forget about enlightenment. And forget about ‘you’ also. And what remains here? That which cannot be gotten rid of remains. It’s just that. Simpler than simple.

Mooji