In my writings I have shared how Jesus promised to the disciples before his crucifixion that he would send another Counselor, the Spirit of Truth, to be with them forever. This he would do when he returned to the Father after his resurrection. I wish to share some verses from the Book of John 14 that address this promise and indicate its application to each of our lives in our time.

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

The NIV from which this is taken includes an explanation: “These [things] depended on Jesus’ going to the Father, because they are works done in the strength of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus would send from the Father.” Jesus goes on to say, I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.

The biblical verses most applicable to my research and writing are at the beginning of the Book of John, 1: 1-4:

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. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

What does “Word” refer to, or to whom? It is more than a word that is spoken in a given language. It refers to a power by which all that has been created was created by God through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. I am including a discussion taken from the Zondervan NIV Study Bible, 2002, Grand Rapids, Michigan:

Word, Greek logos, a term Greeks used not only of the spoken word but also of the unspoken word, the word still in the mind - the reason. [I offer that the Mind of God was the Source of ALL information that has been actualized in his creations, since information only comes from a mind as I have related in my blogs.] When they applied it to the universe, they meant the rational principle that governs all things [by specified information]. The Jews, however, used it to refer to the “word” of God by which he created the world and governs it [actualized information in his creations of energy and matter] and to refer to the law of God that he gave Israel to be the “way” for them to receive the inheritance of life. Of the law the rabbis said that it was “created before the world,” that it “lay on God’s bosom while God sat on the throne of glory,” that it was divine, that it was God’s “firstborn” [the begotten Jesus] through whom he “created the heaven and the earth,” that it is “light” and “life” for the world and that it “is truth.” . . . The Word was distinct from the Father, was God. Jesus was God in the fullest sense. life One of the great concepts of this Gospel. LIfe is Christ’s gift, and he, in fact, is “the life,” light of men. This Gospel also links light with Christ, from whom comes all spiritual illumination [by the power of the Holy Spirit]. He is the “light of the world,” who holds out wonderful hope for humanity and for the creation.

And we are blessed that God created mankind with the plan for a personal, intimate communion, a plan that has been addressed in my books and blogs that we might receive the truth of eternal life and light in Jesus Christ.

I am posting verses from Luke 8:42-48 which tell a remarkable story of power going out of Jesus to heal a woman’s 12 years of bleeding who touched the edge of His cloak. Recall that Jesus, the God-Man, received the Holy Spirit at His baptism by John the Baptist. The Holy Spirit indwelled the human spirit of Jesus, the Son of God, and His soul reached out to the Father for all guidance in His life. Consider in these verses what the relationship could have been between Jesus’ human spirit, the indwelling Holy Spirit of the Father and the soul (mind, will, emotion) of Jesus Christ. We see that Jesus did not intentionally and with awareness heal this woman while immersed in a dense crowd of people, but by the indwelling Holy Spirit she was healed, giving testimony to Jesus as a God-Man, both human and God, in whom indwelled the power of the Holy Spirit. Did God the Father through His Holy Spirit bring healing to her, as Jesus would have had He knowingly seen her? And was that power a manifestation of wave forms that we have been considering in the latest blogs? Food for thought, to grow our faith in the power of the Holy Spirit by whom we too can be indwelled in repentance by the loving grace of God through His begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. “Who touched me,” Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.” But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.” Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

Chris Frith published an article entitled, “The Psychology of Volition,” in Exp Brain Res, 2013, Vol. 229: 289-299. I am posting several excerpts from that article that describe human volition, or free will. Materialists reduce the mind to the physical brain and go so far as to challenge the existence of free will. By reading these posts I hope you can come to your own conclusion about the reality of human volition.

“From the first-person view, our experience of volitional behavior includes a vivid sense of agency. We feel that, through our intentions, we can cause things to happen and we can choose between different actions. . . . In what sense do we control our behavior? Does such control imply the possibility of mental causation and the existence of free will? Is free will compatible with a materialist approach to the study of behavior? Is this truly free behavior uniquely human? . . . The key feature of a voluntary act as opposed to a reflex is that the voluntary act cannot be fully predicted from the preceding context. The implication is that, if the behavior is not being determined by external events, then the choices must be made ‘from inside’, endogenously. . . . [Frith asks] Is it possible for a nervous system to generate truly random behavior? . . . Unpredictable behavior . . . is self-generated, or endogenous. . . . Whatever the precise mechanisms underlying its perception, volition, seen from the first-person perspective, is associated with a vivid experience of agency. As agents, we have the experience of desiring an outcome and of choosing the action that will achieve it. Some believe that it is this experience of being an agent that leads to a belief in free will. . . . It is the first-person aspect of volition that is uniquely human. . . . The experience of agency requires that these signals be interpreted.” In my books and blogs I have made the effort to identify what does the interpretation, and it is the immaterial mind.

To illustrate the commitment to a monistic, materialistic view of human volition, or intent, I am including some excerpts from an article by Patrick Haggard of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. The article is “Human Volition: Towards a Neuroscience of Will,” Nature Reviews, Neuroscience, Vol. 9, December, 2008. I invite you to review this article and draw your own conclusion. I include it to show the resistance encountered when making a case for dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material synaptic networks of the human brain, a compelling case I have endeavored to make.

In the abstract Haggard writes, “The capacity for voluntary action is seen as essential to human nature. Yet neuroscience and behaviorist psychology have traditionally dismissed the topic as unscientific, perhaps because the mechanisms that cause actions have long been unclear. However, new research has identified networks of brain areas, including the pre-supplementary motor area, the anterior prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex, that underlie voluntary action [I submit they facilitate voluntary action]. These areas generate information for forthcoming actions [I submit that the cognitive, immaterial MIND generates the specified information that is instantiated in neural codes of memory and selected for action] . . . Volition consists of a series of decisions regarding whether to act, what action to perform and when to perform it [Does this process reside in the mind or in the material brain?].

Haggard states in his introduction that “A dualistic view of endogenous causation is engrained in our normal language. Everyday language suggests that ‘I’ consciously choose to perform actions and that ‘my’ choice somehow causes the action to occur. This language is dualistic, as it implies a mental ‘I’ that is distinct from both the brain and the body but that can nevertheless trigger brain events and, thus, bodily movement.” If you are familiar with the contents of my books and blogs you will see the similarity between these comments and those I have presented that are associated with data from the neurosciences!

Haggard draws on the work of Libet and makes a case for a monistic, materialistic view of volition. He concludes with the statement, “Voluntary action is one of the most characteristic features of the human brain [I submit that it is a feature of the immaterial cognitive human mind interactive with and facilitated by the synaptic networks of the brain]. . . . Modern neuroscience rejects the traditional dualist view of volition as a causal chain from the conscious mind or ‘soul’ to the brain and body.” He concludes by stating that, “…modern neuroscience is shifting towards a view of voluntary action being based on specific brain processes, rather than being a transcendental feature of human nature.” He submits that an understanding of the neural processes of volition is “essential for our conventional concept of responsibility for action.” Did my mind make me do it, or did my brain?

In her review Gholipour wrote that Aaron Schurger, a researcher at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, “studied fluctuations in neuronal activity, the churning hum in the brain that emerges from the spontaneous flickering of hundreds of thousands of interconnected neurons, . . . an ongoing electrophysiological noise [that] rises and falls in slow tides.” In his review of Kornhuber and Deecke’s innovative approach to the study of this activity he found “no purpose behind these apparent trends . . . . the pattern would simply reflect how various factors had happened to coincide.” When he examined his own data from studies using the same method as the German team he “saw something that looked like the Bereitschaftspotential . . . [but considered that the] rising pattern wasn’t a mark of a brain’s brewing intention at all, but something much more circumstantial.” Gholipour shared that “neuroscientists know that for people to make any type of decision, our neurons need to gather evidence for each option.” In my books and blogs I have discussed how cognition initiates activity in the memory codes in the supplementary motor areas followed by the transmission of spike trains of action potentials through synaptic networks to, for example, move a finger or arm. There is prior neural activity just prior to the willful intent for physical action in this instance. Gholipour referred to more recent studies by Schurger and Princeton colleagues that “repeated a version of Libet’s experiment,” finding that brain activity in their subjects began only 150 milliseconds before a movement, “the time people reported making decisions in Libet’s original experiment. . . . In other words, people’s subjective experience of a decision - what Libet’s study seemed to suggest was just an illusion - appeared to match the actual moment their brains showed them making a decision.” Schurger’s studies “showed the Bereitschaftspotential may not be what we thought it was.” Gholipour pointed out in her article that Schurger’s work did not solve the question of free will any more than Libet’s did, but did deepen the question. In my more recent blogs I have identified several actions in synaptic networks that occur as a result of cognitive intent, including the proposed generation of wave forms that are transmitted via quantum tunneling to stimulate action potentials. Might this activity be included in the 150 milliseconds prior to a movement, thus giving support to dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material synaptic networks of the human brain?

But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. (Matthew 10: 19-20, NIV)

As I share posts that consider how the immaterial mind of Man and Mind of God interact with God’s created synaptic networks of the material brain, I pause to remind the reader of the ultimate objective for my blog posts and my books. We must have reason to believe that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is restored to us in repentance by the grace of God through His Son Jesus Christ. As He promised His disciples upon His resurrection, He sent the Holy Spirit when He rejoined the Father to provide for the salvation of fallen mankind in our time. We have the blessing to commune bidirectionally with the Holy Spirit and to be led by Him in these most challenging times. People need hope, and eternal Hope was revived through Jesus Christ’s sin sacrifice in Man’s behalf. It is our purpose in restoration to share the simple but powerful Truth of the Gospel. No, one’s salvation does not depend upon an intellectual understanding of how dualist interaction occurs, but to many an acceptance of such evidence gives reason to believe in the Truth of the Gospel and the reality of an intimate, personal communion with the Holy Spirit, truly minds in communion.

Gholipour pointed out in her article that what the readiness potential was was unknown. It appeared to be “the electrophysiological sign of planning and initiating an action.” Experiments by Benjamin Libet asked why it took “half a second or so between deciding to tap a finger and actually doing it?” He repeated the experiment of Kornhuber and Deecke with some methodological modifications. His results “showed that while the Bereitschafspotential started to rise about 500 milliseconds before the participants performed an action, they reported their decision to take that action only about 150 milliseconds beforehand. ‘The brain evidently decides to initiate the act’ before a person is even aware that decision has taken place, Libet concluded.” Free will was thus discounted, and dualism between the immaterial mind and the material synaptic networks of the brain was challenged.

Gholipour shared that it was possible that what Libet observed was accurate, but the question to be asked was “if the Bereitschafspotential didn’t cause actions in the first place?” Libet’s idea has been powerfully influential in neuroscience, and a real alternative had to be offered to dismantle it. In the next blog I will share Gholipour’s review of a 2010 study by Aaron Schurger that made such an offer. Read on.

Gholipour identified the two German scientists who discovered the readiness potential, or Bereitschaftspotential. They are Hans Helmut Kornhuber and Luder Deecke. “Over lunch in 1964, the pair decided that they would figure out how the brain works to spontaneously generate an action. ‘Kornhuber and I believed in free will,’ says Deecke.” In my research I am seeking to identify how the intention of an immaterial mind generates encoded spike trains of action potentials that are transmitted with specified information through neural synaptic networks to “generate an action.”

Kornhuber and Deecke devised an experiment utilizing a computer to measure their participants’ brain waves that worked only after it detected a finger tap. They recorded the brain activity separately on tapes and played the reels backwards into the computer. This technique is referred to as reverse-averaging, and it revealed the readiness potential, or Bereitschaftspotential. “John Eccles and . . . Karl Popper compared the study’s ingenuity to Galileo’s use of sliding balls for uncovering the laws of motion of the universe.” So the question is, what IS the readiness potential and is it related to free will? Read on.