Quotes About Brain

A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain.

Krishnamurti distinguishes between thinking, an active process, and thought, the result of past thinking filed away in the memory of the brain, or in a library or computer, etc. Thought contains all the wisdom, and much of the folly, of the past; it's a great labor-saving device. Why does Krishnamurti regard thought as profoundly dangerous and the enemy of thinking?

To the Transactional psychologist, quantum mechanics has the same fascination (and the same resemblance to brain science) as cryptozoology, lepufology and Disinformation Systems, and all these fields, the scientifically sober and the disreputably weird, bear a distinct family resemblance to each other.

Metaprogramming or neurological self-criticism, developed as a habit to replace the old habit of wandering off to Real Universes, creates that kind of ecstasy more and more frequently, and it appears that one has never been using one's brain before but only misusing it.

We have made a beautiful (we hope beautiful) model of consciousness in terms of brain hardware and software. Now we need to remember again that, while the brain can be modeled by a computer, the model is never the whole system. The model-maker or metaprogrammer is bigger than the model or program.

The semantic time-binding system makes a feedback loop between the verbal left brain hemisphere, the larynx, the right hand (which manipulates the world and checks the accuracy of maps or glosses) and the eyes (which read words and also scan the environment).

The sixth circuit of the brain kicks into action when the nervous system begins to receive signals from within the individual neuron — from the RNA-DNA "dialogue," the neurogenetic feedback system.

The entire nervous system, including the brain, has been designed like the rest of the body, by the "code" within the DNA molecule, which sends signals via messenger RNA molecules to tell the organism what to do: Grow red hair. Have blue eyes. Stand up and walk now. Start to talk. Find a mate. Etc. Our entire mental lives — our brain hardware and software — exist within the perimeters of this DNA master-tape.

Neuro-transmitters are chemicals which alter the electro-colloidal balance of the brain and hence change the perceptual field. Brain-change agents.

All of which is robotic, until one learns how to reprogram and reimprint one's own brain circuits. In most cases, such metaprogramming skill is never acquired. It all goes by in a flash, on mechanical auto-pilot, in zero time. "I just found myself doing it," says the soldier as he is being court-martialed for cowardice or decorated for bravery.

But, if our brain software programs our selves and our universes, who programs our brain software? The accidents of history and environment, it seems — in most cases. But learning to internalize and use the principles of Quantum Psychology (or similar systems) adds a new factor. In that case we can gradually learn to program our programs . . . Dr. John Lilly calls this metaprogramming.

READING NEWS HEADLINES CAUSES BRAIN TO SHRINK: SCIENTISTS FIND HAIKU ALSO RISKY

Aleister Crowley knew about this pragmatically, before modern neurology. He taught his pupils to learn to write equally well with both hands, thereby forcing the dormant right brain to spring to activity.

The second circuit, the emotional-territorial networks of the brain, is concerned entirely with power politics. This "patriotic" circuit is built into all vertebrates and is perhaps 500 million to 1000 million years old. In the modern human it seems to be centralized in the thalamus — the "back brain" or "old brain" and is linked with the voluntary nervous system and the muscles.

But in considering the above experiments, I feel we need to accept some sort of post-modernism, or at least some of the "neurological relativism" I preach in all my books. The instrument that measures all other instruments — the human nervous system — has its own laws, and one of them involves always seeing the results one wants to see until and unless something really startles the brain enough to reframe its experiences.

Beta wave activity in the brain correlates with outer-directed activity and dominance of sympathetic nervous system functions. Alpha wave activity, and lower brain frequencies, correlate with inner-directed passivity and dominance of parasympathetic nervous system functions.

When the accumulated facts, gimmicks, tools, techniques and gadgets of neuro-science — the science of brain change and brain liberation — reaches a certain critical mass, we will all be able to free ourselves from these robot cycles.

To say that religion and priestcraft have played a conservative role in history is an understatement. One might as well say that bubonic plague has killed a few people, or that Hitler was a little bit strange. The chief role of religion has always been reactionary. This is its evolutionary function, in the dialectic of the circuitry of the brain.

Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also

THE CHOKE HOLD cut off blood to a man's brain, putting him to sleep like a laptop when its battery is low. It was an effective way to subdue a person, though sometimes that person did not wake up. Pike sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for the man to wake.

Biopsychiatrists at the Harvard Medical School have shown that mothers who frequently abuse their children even verbally can impair the circuitry of those kids' brains.

Neuroscience has shown that the child's brain is biologically primed to learn from experience, so that early environments powerfully affect the architecture of the developing brain. The most fundamental feature of that experience is interaction with responsive adults—typically, but not only, parents.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

In that moment of educational ennui, a freshman girl says, "I can bring a human brain to school if you want–my father has lots of them." (Talk about a full-scale class alert: She's going to do WHAT?!")