Sir John Eccles defined thinking as a process of mental concentration on some anticipated sensory input, on some particular task or on some particular learned program. There is an internal generation of thinking in the absence of any signaling to the brain by sense organs.

Because human beings are uniquely gifted to express and understand language, neural codes transmit linguistic information (as does the genetic code) with small probabilities defining specification. The information has structure, meaning and purpose. The intention of the immaterial mind of a sender transmits information to a recipient, whether that be the mind of a person or muscles of a limb with an intended action, or result.

I cite Dr. James Le Fanu’s discussion of the “self” in this post which reference is included in my book, Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction Between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man through Neural Synaptic Networks.

“…the Self is an autonomous agent with freedom to choose, … founded upon a rich autobiographical inner record of memory, an accumulated subjective experience extending back to childhood, and that it possesses powers of reason and imagination expressed through language extending beyond the boundaries of personal experience. The Self is nonmaterial with no substance, and it cannot be weighed or measured. Its non-material attributes collectively form the “inner core” that is each unique individual. Self is grounded in the human brain which facilitates its formation through cognition and memory, but it has a coherent, durable transcendent reality that cannot be explained by ever-changing, transient electrical activity of neuronal circuits.”

I am citing work of John C. Eccles addressing dualist interaction between the self-conscious mind and the cortical neurons in the anatomical and physiological entities called modules. These entities are comprised of ensembles of many hundreds of neurons acting in a collusive patterned array. In Part Two of “Waves in Our Brains” we shall see how prescient Eccles was when he coauthored his book with Karl Popper in 1977. Some of the terms he used are changed but the functional relevance remains to this day.

The self-conscious mind is actively engaged in reading out from the multitude of active centers at the highest level of brain activity, namely the [modules] of the … cerebral [cortex]. The self-conscious mind selects from these centers according to attention, and from moment to moment integrates its selection to give unity even to the most transient experiences. Furthermore the self-conscious mind acts upon these neural centers modifying the dynamic spatiotemporal patterns of the neural events. Thus we propose that the self-conscious mind exercises a superior interpretative and controlling role upon the neural events….Thus we conjecture that the self-conscious mind is scanning the modular activities in the liaison areas of the cerebral cortex…from moment to moment it is selecting modules according to its interest, the phenomenon of attention, and is itself integrating from all this diversity to give the unified conscious experience.

With the Fall of Man (Genesis 3) the image of God in humans was corrupted. Intimate communion between the soul of Man and the Holy Spirit was lost. In sin Man thereby experienced spiritual death, loss of communion between the human spirit and the Holy Spirit. Man’s mind became governed by his soul, by the will of his own self-centered focus.

The relationship between God and Man was and is designed to be a bidirectional, interactive one. Man’s capacity is to use all the communicative attributes of his Creator God, his mind being created in the image of the Mind of God. The restoration of this interaction depends upon Man’s repentance and the soul’s choice to follow the Counsel of the Holy Spirit through his human spirit. As the human spirit rules over the soul led by the indwelling Holy Spirit, the soul in turn expresses itself through the cognitive attributes of the human brain.

It is important to understand that to be led by the Spirit it is necessary to communicate with Him, to have “spiritual ears.” It is through the Holy Spirit that Man has communion and communication with God. The spirit of Man comes in contact with and unites with the Holy Spirit as one. The Holy Spirit is divine, and the fallen human spirit is not, but the two are united as one so that the repentant human spirit is reborn to new life in Jesus Christ. The new spirit is none other than God’s indwelling Spirit Who will enable God’s people to follow His decrees. It is the presence of God Himself. The Holy Spirit is in you/us.

In His meeting with the woman at the well in the Book of John Jesus explained what had been proclaimed in the Old Testament, that God is Spirit, a living Person. He existed before the natural. He created the natural and continues to this day to give it life and breath, and He penetrates the natural. The Bible defines life of spirit as a God-given capacity in human beings to form a relationship with God, to serve and to please Him.

I will be posting a series of brief blogs that highlight contents of chapters in my book, Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction Between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man Through Neural Synaptic Networks. The blogs will march through the book contents. The first blog, “Matter and Mind,” includes excerpts from two articles by William A. Dembski entitled “Are We Spiritual Machines?” and “Conflating Matter and Mind.” I cite both articles on page xxi. They are in response to the question I raised, “But if mental activity includes a functional immaterial component, how can the immaterial mind of Man relate to physically based brain activity and to the Mind of God, who is Spirit? How might the Holy Spirit interact with the human mind, will and emotion - the soul?”

Within [a] richer world of both material and nonmaterial things, physical laws lose their status as absolutes and become subject to principles that may be quite metaphysical, (principles like intelligent agency and divine providence).

The brain is a physical system which captures intelligence . . . which is metaphysical, created by God as part of our mind, soul and “heart” before we were even placed in the womb. Our brains are interactive processors of this distinctive human gift, an incorporation of the divine Logos.

Jon Lieff, M.D.

In his article, “Searching for the Mind,” (jonlieffmd.com/blog/neuronal-networks-brain-waves) Dr. Lieff discusses neuronal networks and brain waves. I am posting a paragraph from his article that is descriptive of the synchronicity of brain waves in neural synaptic networks and its significance.

The changing dynamics of wide-ranging neuronal circuits occurs throughout the brain in milliseconds at the level of individual neurons and groups of neurons. Neurons join a circuit one moment and another the next moment. Groups of neurons fire action potentials in very specific rhythms that rapidly change. Groups of neurons produce brain waves - synchronous oscillations - that communicate information from one section of the brain to another. Synchronous brain waves couple with other frequencies to connect multiple regions.

E. Stan Lennard, M.D., Sc.D.

Part One

In the fifth chapter of my book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, I cited Mortimer Adler’s discussion of the mind’s relation to the material brain.  He stated that the intellectual mind is superior to matter and cannot be reduced to it.  It is an immaterial component of human nature.  He said, “The intellect cannot normally function without dependence on the activity of the brain, but the brain is not the physical organ of intellectual thought.” (1)  According to Adler human behavior consists of two substances, mind and physical brain, and the two interact with one another. 

Neural impulses are the same in electrochemical character.  They consist of action potentials transmitted across and through neural synaptic networks as spike trains with distinctive frequencies and amplitudes, as we shall see.  Neural structures are histologically and anatomically similar, or even identical.  Distinguishable concepts that reflect intellectual and cognitive processes cannot be embodied in matter that is so similar or identical!  The power of conceptual thought must be an immaterial energy,  and energy is expressed as waves.  We are aware that light and sound are transmitted by waves.  Likewise, waves are transmitted across synaptic clefts by quantum tunneling with specified frequencies,  amplitudes and trajectories.  Going further, it is now recognized that elementary particles at the atomic level, electromagnetism, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces are . . . waves.  Even space consists of unique vibrational signatures!  In this and my subsequent blog I will discuss the flow of waves within and across our brains. 

One more point merits emphasis.  John C. Eccles maintained that the human mind is not causally closed to nonmaterial stimuli as claimed by materialists. The neural synapse is considered to be a frontier across which information flows in both directions. (2) The billions of interconnections between neurons and trillions of synapses in neural networks constitute an information processing system.  William A. Dembski has stated that matter itself is reducible to the information instantiated within its design, construction and function.  It is energy that causes information to undergo such dynamic transformations.  Energy is inferred from information and is called by Dembski the “causal glue.” (3)  Werner Gitt stated that information is a fundamental entity on equal footing with matter and energy. It is required for the start of any controlled process whether energy or matter.  Gitt identified the one prerequisite of information, that it must be in coded form. (4)  Information itself is preceded by the prime source of all information, a mind.  In John 1:1-3 it is said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.”

The electrochemical activity of neural networks translates into the riches of the human mind.  James Le Fanu presumed that there has to be a code within the patterns of the activity, ensuring that the firing of the visual cortex, for example, gives rise to the perception of trees and birds seen from one’s window. (5)  The neural code requires an intelligence to establish the rules of syntax, meaning and purpose, human or divine.  Anything with high information content must be interpreted by the intellect of a mind.  It is the immaterial mind that interacts cognitively with encoded information within the spike trains of neural synaptic networks.  It is a perceptual process by which linguistic neural codes are interpreted by a human mind with the unique capacity for expressing and understanding advanced language.

The application of increasingly sophisticated technologies to the study of the human mind has generated more understanding of waves that are transmitted through the brain.  Initial observation of brain waves was by electroencephalography which recorded waves transmitted across the skull with relatively poor resolution and no directional components.  Human brains can now be studied by electrocorticography (ECoG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging.  ECoG applies to direct studies of live neural tissues in responsive patients such as those undergoing neurosurgery for epilepsy.  Multiple monitors can be placed over larger surfaces of the brain itself to study the characteristics and routes of neural transmission.  In Part Two of this blog I will share what I have learned from more current neuroscience literature.  There is yet a dominant perspective that the human mind is not immaterial and can be reduced to the functional activities of the physical brain.  Much of the literature of neuroscience does not acknowledge the human mind with causal and cognitive power but equates the function of the brain to computation.  The mind is considered to be an epiphenomenon by some.  By reviewing points I make in my books in the paragraphs above I have provided an introduction that shows the merit of dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material brain and its neural networks.  I will soon post Part Two of this blog.  In the blog that follows, “Minds in Communion,” I will focus on the dualist interaction between the mind of Man and the Mind of God.

References

1.        Mortimer J. Adler, Intellect: Mind over Matter (New York: Collier Books, MacMillan Publishing Company, 1990)

2.       John C. Eccles, How the Self Controls Its Brain (Berlin, New York, London: Springer-Verlag, 1994)

3.       William A. Dembski, Being As Communion: A Metaphysics of Information (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014)

4.       Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information: A Scientist Explains the Incredible Design in Nature (Green Forest, Arizona: Master Books, 2007)

5.       James Le Fanu, Why Us? How the Self Controls Its Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009)

Part Two

In preparation

As I work to complete the text of “Part Two, Waves in Our Brains,” I will be regularly posting brief blogs that relate to the content of the blogs posted on and after August 1, 2020 and in my two books listed under Products. I will also post brief excerpts from articles I am referencing for “Waves in Our Brains.” By reading these blog posts and my books you will derive a deeper understanding of the message I am conveying through my website about the reality of the living Holy Spirit and how He communes with us.