Friday, October 06, 2006

The Mind is the Universe

and the universe is the mind.

I always wondered how--if there was any chance of consciousness after death--it would be contained. Gamma rays? I do believe in a collective unconscious, but knowing that the mind is in the brain makes it hard to imagine anyway of it remaining after the cells, which make it up, decompose.

Anyone out there who doesn't understand what I mean by that should read Oliver Sacks' book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. He shows how brain lesions can fundamentally change who we are, yes our consciousness. That slim little book, more than anything else, shook my metaphysical understanding.

But today, I Stumbled upon (literally) two images. One of a neuron and one of a model of the universe. See for yourself. It's the same thing. It's all one and I like that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

kim - this is judy !
wow !!! extremely remarkable similarity between a brain cell and an evolving universe ! both remind me of fractals and chaos ...

as for consciousness beyond death...obviously, i don't know, but i wonder if somehow newton's laws apply? conservation of energy and its correlary cons of momentum...live on !

Kim Barke said...

Yes, Judy you're right. There has to be something with that. That's why when I was younger I was comforted by the idea that our consciousness could somehow be contained in another form of energy, like gamma rays or something else.

I know it's a stretch though. How would the information and organization be transferred. It would almost have to exist there already in a parallel way, like a back-up system. And how do we back-up anyway. Imagine dying before you've backed up. F***

Maybe meditating is a way of back-up.

Thanks for your thoughts~

Kim