FREEDOM AND THE FIELD
Dialogue 19A: You were saying that the brain cells themselves are conditioned by the past—
the biological and historical past; and you said that the structure of the brain cells
could change. Could we go into that? The brain cells seem to have an activity of
their own.
K: I was going to ask, this morning, whether the professionals have ever talked
of the brain cells.
R: The Indian philosophers do not mention the brain cells.
K: Why? Is it because that when they speak of the mind, they include the brain
cells?
A: They say that the mind is matter. They do not go further.
K: Everything is recorded in the brain cells; every incident, every impression is
imprinted in the brain. One can observe the vast number of impressions in
oneself. You ask how it is possible to go beyond, to make the brain cells quiet.
A: Normally you would think that the brain would be an instrument of the
intellect.
K: But is not the intellect the instrument of the brain rather than the other way?
A: Is it?
K: Let us investigate it. The capacity to reason, to compare, to weigh, to judge,
to understand, to investigate, to rationalize and to act are all part of memory. The
intellect formulates ideas and, from that, there is action.
A: The materialistic view is that thought is to the brain what bile is to the liver,
and that the phenomenal manifestation is the result of the movement of the non-
phenomenal. What the traditionalists say is that at death there is the complete
cessation of the brain, but that the complete cessation of the brain leaves, in a
subtle way, a residue.
K: A thought?
A: The residue exists independently of the brain which has become dead.
Therefore, it creates another focus. Out of its activity, something new emerges.