The Chemical Brain

You can look at a human brain and compare it with a personal computer

You have the hardware, that collection of billions of neurons connected in trillions of connections, and you have the software, all your memories, and thoughts firing the neurons creating an electrical storm in your brain.

This is a rather new view of the brain’s functionality. For the longest time, we thought that our thoughts are created by the neurons firing but now we understand that the brain is just a machine and it is the software, our thoughts, that makes the brain think.

So where is that software, that data in our brain that thing we identify as being us, comes from?

We are a quilt of data collected and put together from all over the place.

We start with the data inherited from our parents through our DNA. We add to that the formative learning from our primary caretakers, parents, grandparents or nurses. Then we enter the school system, the media, TV and Internet and of course our own curiosity impulses will make us search and assimilate more data.

All this data put together makes up what we call “I”

Since I can remember I felt that in my head there were to people present. I couldn’t quite understand it and nobody could explain it to me why I felt that way. Later when I grew up I kept it as a secret because of the stigma attached to the people that heard voices in their heads but latter when I start my search for spirituality the question came back to me.

The best I could do is to separate the “I” into two parts. The “Spirit” or “Soul” being the part we are born with, the information carried through the DNA from generation to generation from the beginning of time. The I am therefore I think presence. I look at that primordial data as the BIOS of the brain, the language on all the other languages are built.

The second voice of “I” is the Ego or “Reason. This is the part that is added to us through education and experience. This is the “I think therefore I am” presence. It is a higher language using abstractions like words, written words, and spoken words. This Higher language is specific varying from culture to culture and individual to individual.

I also believe there is a “hardware” duality as well. I believe that the “Spirit” resides in our “primitive” brain the limbic system and that the Ego resides in the modern brain, in the cortex.

Also, the way the two manifestations of “I” have separate ways of operation and interface with the rest of the body.

The Spirit / Soul operates in feelings and emotions and interacts with the rest of the body through hormones: Estrogen, Testosterone, Adrenaline, Ephedrine, Dopamine, Serotonin etc.

The Ego /Reason operates in electrical pulses through the firing of the neurons in the cortex and the interaction with the rest of the body is done also through electrical pulses carried to all the muscle that we can control.

Getting old has its set of problems, especially health-related problems. So, I found myself with a little lower back pain problem. I went to see a pain specialist (OK my problem wasn’t that little) and he prescribed me a large dose of a drug used in the treatment of depression that also has a pain control effect and not like the opioids it is not addictive in long time use.

But my greatest concern was not the addiction part but how this mood/pain control drug will affect my spiritual practice, mainly my meditation.

Since the pain had already ruined my meditation sessions I went ahead with the drug treatment.

I thought I will be like some of my friends that are doing long-term depression drug treatments.

Turn into a zombie indifference to what’s going on without any genuine feelings or creative expression.

What I found very interesting is that the effect was exactly the opposite.

My meditation practice has not suffered I even go as far as to say to say that is better.

That doesn’t make any sense unless the meditation somehow changes the way the drug affects my system. That is a fascinating hypothesis and it would be really interesting if a comparative study will be done to see what is the effect of meditation on mood-altering drugs.