WORTH THINKING ABOUT: JUST WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
Brain researcher V. S. Ramachandran of the University of California at
San Diego suggests that we may all be nothing more than illusions created by
our brain cells:
"During the last three decades, neuroscientists throughout the world
have probed the nervous system in fascinating detail and have learned a
great deal about the laws of mental life and about how these laws emerge
from the brain. The pace of progress has been exhilarating, but--at the same
time--the findings make many people uncomfortable. It seems somehow
disconcerting to be told that your life, all your hopes, triumphs and
aspirations simply arise from the activity of neurons in your brain. But
far from being humiliating, this idea is ennobling, I think.
"Science--cosmology, evolution and especially the brain sciences--is
telling us that we have no privileged position in the universe and that our
sense of having a private nonmaterial soul "watching the world" is really an
illusion (as has long been emphasized by Eastern mystical traditions like
Hinduism and Zen Buddhism). Once you realize that far from being a
spectator, you are in fact part of the eternal ebb and flow of events in the
cosmos, this realization is very liberating. Ultimately this idea also
allows you to cultivate a certain humility--the essence of all authentic
religious experience."