In his preface to his book, Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain, Dr. Wilder Penfield shared his experience listening to a lecture by Sir Charles Sherrington as a medical student in Oxford. He said, “I realized that there was a thrilling undiscovered country to be explored in the mechanisms of the mammalian nervous system. Through it, one might approach the mystery of the mind, . . . there was always a restless wondering within me about the working of the brain and its relation to mind. . . . the primary duty of each of us is to give an account of his own intriguing expeditions into this undiscovered country and to pass on his own record accurately and hopefully to others who follow on these explorations that have now become a fateful pilgrimage.

In the blogs to follow I will show how prescient the neurosurgeon, Dr. Penfield, was in elucidating the interaction between the mind and the brain through his studies conducted on live patients.

I am redirecting our attention to the writing of Dr. Wilder Penfield, a notable neurosurgeon who died in 1976, whose writings profoundly influenced my research into dualist interactionism through his book, Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain. Published in 1975 shortly before his death it served to redirect research into brain function which had reduced the workings of the mind to the physiological functions of the brain, called materialist reductionism which survives to this day. We shall find his comments revealing of the beauty God created in the human spirit, soul and brain. He “devoted much of his thinking to mental processes, including contemplation of whether there was any scientific basis for the existence of the human soul” [taken from Wikipedia]. Along the way, I plan to insert summaries of current articles from neuroscience I review in my ongoing research. Thank you for your interest.

A final post taken from the letter composed by Nicolae Moldoveanu in Michael Card’s book speaks to how music prepares one for the coming of the Holy Spirit:

Christian or evangelical music prepares the way for the coming of the Holy Spirit in the human heart (2 Kings 3:15). The soul that has the harp of the heart tuned daily by the great Master Musician - the Lord Jesus - has all that is needed for singing the music of the Lord.

A second excerpt from a letter composed for Michael Card’s book, Scribbling in the Sand, was by Nicolae Moldoveneanu:

Music is the gift God gave His believers for praise and worship. There are two gifts from God that will remain with us in the life to come - love and music. God created the earth in the sound of music, and we could say that the whole Universe has been created in the sound of music.

What is integral to music? Frequency, amplitude, rhythm and direction, among other features. In my blog posted earlier and entitled, “Waves in Our Brains,” Parts One and Two, I describe what has been learned about wave forms that transmit specified information through neural synaptic networks as codes which we learn to interpret over a lifetime. Synchronization of waves between the mind and cortical modules is being found to characterize wave frequencies and amplitudes that are transmitted and given direction through specific neural networks to bring about actions and cognitive events. Are we beginning to see the beauty of God’s creation manifested within our minds and brains as “sounds of music?”

Please refer back to my blog entitled, “Reasons to Believe in God through Music,” which was posted on July 6, 2020. Dr. William A. Dembski speaks to how the beauty of God’s creation is manifested in “Sounds of Music.”

Makoto Fujimura composed a letter for Michael Card’s book from which I am posting an excerpt. It speaks to the theme of my second book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story:

The cross of Jesus stands because we cannot possibly meet God’s standard of righteousness and goodness. We cannot even keep our own promises, let alone God’s commands. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Jesus’ love for us can only be received as a gift. Only when we rest upon him does he give us wings, to hover between heaven and earth. these wings are gifts of grace, but they must be aligned to God’s direction and purposes. Our journey will begin in a Garden and end in a City. We are headed toward the City of God.

Michael Card referred to Jesus’ life of prayer:

Jesus’ life of prayer teaches us that we do not merely listen for words; we must learn to listen to the silence. For, as Mother Teresa said, “God speaks in the silence of the heart.”

Though his divinity possessed the very mind of God, his humanity continually sought out the Father in all-night prayer sessions. In the account of those sessions we hear very few words, and so we can assume that there was much listening. . . . Prayer, for Jesus, seems to have been a time for simply sharing the presence of his Father, of listening to the silence . . . .

I again refer to comments by Michael Card in his book, Scribbling in the Sand. In his courtship of the woman who became his wife, Michael was advised by a dear friend, “If you really want to show her you love her, . . . listen to her.” I took his advice, and that girl has been my wife for twenty years. Later I extended my understanding of this adage to my relationship with the Lord when I began to realize how much I wanted to show him the extent of my love for him. If we desire to demonstrate our love for God, shouldn’t we invest ourselves in listening to him? Isn’t it true that he demonstrates his love to us by listening endlessly to our prayers? . . . listening to the silence of prayer.

In my books and in my blogs I repeatedly emphasize that in repentance we have had the indwelling of the Holy Spirit restored by the grace of God through the sin sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ. Yes, we can pray TO Him, but we can also hear FROM Him in our time. By our examining the concordance between neuroscience and Scripture we have gained a small understanding of how this loving communion works.

In Chapter Six of my second book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, entitled “Our Hunger for Communion Today,” I cite discussions by Calvin Miller who has given confirmation that the plan of God has always been to have an intimate, personal, bidirectional communion with Man. Miller stressed the importance of seeking union with the Holy Spirit in our inner being. We learn how to listen in silence for his counsel so we can grow in righteousness and in obedience by his power as mentored by the life of Jesus Christ. Miller emphasized that the holy communion of prayer is “two-way.” Meaningful communion with God through the Holy Spirit is not only a voice but also an ear. Listening is the most valuable part of prayer. Our focused silence is key to blocking out the inner and outward chatter, or noise. The Holy Spirit wants us to be open to him, and our silence is a door for him to enter into our souls. Our silence is an ear for us to hear, and we have seen the beauty within the linguistic neural codes transmitted through synaptic networks that give “voice” to his counsel.

I will make several posts taken from a beautifully written book, Scribbling in the Sand, by Michael Card. The posts will relate to points I have made in my two books and in my blog to date. I have been discussing the compelling reality of dual interactionism between the Mind of God and the mind of Man, and it is important to see the beauty God created within the neural synaptic networks that enable this loving communion.

[God’s] relentless movement toward us, his romantic reaching out to Christ, embodies a beauty that is beyond words. Our God is beautiful in all his ways; it is a part of his perfection. This divine beauty has been woven into the fabric of creation, in the massive stars, inside the submicroscopic balance of the atom [and in the synapses that enable mankind’s cognition]. Though we will only ever grasp his beauty in the most finite and rudimentary way, as creatures before a Creator, still it can be enough to incite an unconscious but uncontrollable desire to respond, to make our own personal world beautiful in its own way, to worship.

I conclude the series of blog posts based on Chapter Five of The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story with the following comments:

Both the immaterial Mind of the Holy Spirit and the immaterial mind of Man have the capacity to direct synaptic networks in the cerebral cortex and associated regions of the brain to transmit specified information within linguistic neural codes. The human mind of the God-Man Jesus Christ during His life on Earth was in an intimate communion with God the Father through His indwelling Holy Spirit. He was in full obedience to the counsel of the Spirit through His human spirit, even to death on the cross. The information that has been shared provides compelling reasons to believe from the neurosciences that the same process exists in our time through the human spirit in the mind of Man,. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ glorified has given a renewed direct access to the human spirit and repentant soul by the indwelling counsel of the Holy Spirit by God’s grace and boundless love.