A treasured friend and spiritual mentor presented me with two books by Earl Jabay. I will share excerpts from his book entitled “The Kingdom of Self: A Fresh, Penetrating Analysis of Your Greatest Predicament.”

I have endeavored to present justification for the dualist interaction between the Holy Spirit and the immaterial human spirit and soul through the neural synaptic networks of the brain in our time. Most important is our accepting the reality of how this interaction leads to our becoming members of the Kingdom of God. But first, we must overcome our idolization of the Kingdom of Self and submit ourselves wholly to the Counsel of the Holy Spirit who indwells us in repentance, sent by the resurrected Jesus Christ as He promised His disciples just prior to His death.

In the “Concluding remarks” of his paper Pulvermuller includes the following statement:

“. . . widespread cortical regions and cortico-cortical long-distance connections provide the machinery for holding together and integrating semantic representations and circuits.”

I would add to this important point that, indeed, these connections in the neural networks of the brain transmit semantic information instantiated within linguistic neural codes consisting of the amplitudes and frequencies of spike trains of action potentials. Nerve impulses are quite undifferentiated throughout the brain and cannot be directly interpreted as mountain scenes, the beauty of music, creative expressions in composition and art and the like. It is in the province of the immaterial cognitive mind that such interpretations are generated from neural codes learned in a lifetime and archived in memory. I address this point in detail in my books and blogs. This article gives no credit to the immaterial mind interactive with the material synaptic networks of the human brain. The author’s reference to “semantic hubs” is consistent with the function of the cognitive mind.

Pulvermuller goes on to state, “Semantic processing may occur in an integration center or ‘semantic hub’ that joins together the various aspects of a word’s meaning, for example, in the case of the word ‘fish’, about shape, color, smell and taste. Although a specialized area is in fact not necessary for integration of semantic information - because the binding of multimodal semantic features into one coherent representation may rely on long-range cortico-cortical connections - it is possible that such a single hub exists. However, neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies have revealed several cortical regions that may support general meaning processes.”

The author rightly questions how sensorimotor input is correlated into coherent semantic information, such as “fish” with its shape, color, smell and taste properties. Indeed, there are long-range cortico-cortical connections that transmit encoded information within synchronous, coherent wave frequencies, shapes and amplitudes. This topic has been addressed in my blogs. But what gives neural wave forms meaning - semantics - as well as purpose? The wave forms themselves? I submit that the immaterial mind has the created capacity to interpret the linguistic neural codes and thereby to understand their meaning - semantics - and purpose as well as to give action to the codes. I submit that the mind is the integrating center, the “semantic hub.” Pulvermuller stated above that, “Although a specialized area is in fact not necessary for integration of semantic information - because the binding of multimodal semantic features into one coherent representation may rely on long-range cortico-cortical connections - it is possible that such a single hub exists.”

The author opens his paper with the following statements:

“These results support models of category-specific semantic grounding and meaning embodiment in sensory and motor systems. However, it has also been argued that lesions sometimes compromise sensory or motor processing without impacting on semantics and some semantic deficits appear without concordant sensorimotor impairment, thus supporting ‘disembodied’ semantic mechanisms that can dissociate from sensorimotor functions and brain areas.”

As we proceed through this article it will be significant to what “disembodied” refers. The question I raise is if the term could refer to the immaterial cognitive mind. Neural transmissions have instantiated within them encoded information with meaning - semantics. But it is the immaterial human mind that “reads,” or interprets, that meaning through a lifetime of learning, archived in neural memory. Let us read on.

The senior pastor of our church will be presenting his new book on the baptism of the Holy Spirit at a revival beginning this Sunday evening. I will be reading it and sharing his comments as they relate to the focus of my books and blogs.

In the meantime, I will post comments on an article by Friedermann Pulvermuller, “How Neurons Make Meaning: Brain Mechanisms for Embodied and Abstract-Symbolic Semantics,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, September 2013, Vol. 17, No. 9.

This is a relatively recent work addressing neuronal semantics, a topic I also have addressed in my books and blogs. The point I have stressed is that neuronal synaptic networks transmit information within spike trains of action potentials that are linguistically encoded within the frequencies of the transmissions. I have offered that the human being learns to interpret the semantics, or meaning, of codes over a lifetime, and the codes are archived in memory. This interpretive function is by the immaterial mind in a dualist interactive relationship with the material brain. We shall see in this important article by Pulvermuller that no mention is made of the cognitive mind as I have described it, presenting instead an interpretation consistent with materialist reductionism, that cognition rests solely within the neuronal networks of the brain. As before, I invite the interested reader to obtain this article and derive your own conclusions.

I conclude my posts from Cymbala’s book, Fresh Power: Experiencing the Vast Resources of the Spirit of God, with this last post:

“Yes, there must be a turning to God and confession of sin as we place our faith in Christ. But how can I effectively clean up my act without the Holy Spirit’s power working within [Italics added]? Forgiveness is free. And so is the Holy Spirit. We can do nothing to merit his presence or power. We can only come as we are. That is why the apostles used the wording ‘the gift of the Holy Spirit’ repeatedly throughout the book of Acts (2:38; 8:20; 10:45; 11:17).”

It is my hope that the concordance I have presented between Scripture and neuroscience confirms our faith and trust in the power of the personal Holy Spirit to commune with us and guide our sanctification to become Christ-like in our time.

“As one godly writer put it long ago, ‘All merit is in the Son . . . and all power is of the Spirit.’ What a profound sentence! The only thing that will ever give you or me acceptance with God is the work of Jesus Christ our Savior. It will never be our own good works. But listen carefully to the corresponding truth: The only power that will keep us victorious on a daily basis comes through the Holy Spirit. It’s not about what we can do, but what God can do! His grace does not stop upon our receiving salvation; it is the storehouse from which we draw all we need for the rest of our lives.” (Cymbala)

“When the Son of God returned to his heavenly throne (Acts 1:9), it ushered in the age of the Holy Spirit. Whatever God is doing today in our world, he is doing through the Holy Spirit. He has no other agent on this planet. We see the incredible start of his working in the book of Acts, and we acknowledge our need to witness the same advances for his Kingdom today.” (Cymbala)

“Humanity faces two great spiritual dilemmas. The first is what to do about our past sins and transgressions, which separate us from God and produce a guilty conscience. This sense of condemnation makes us shrink from any communion with God - the very thing for which we were created. But Jesus came and gave his life so we could be freed from all that. The ugly record can be erased and our names written in the Book of Life through the blood that Jesus shed on the cross of Calvary.

“But then comes the second problem we all face: How can we be changed [sanctified] so that we don’t go on repeating the same old sins in the future? How will we rise above the moral pollution of compulsive sin that caused us to need Jesus in the first place? Unless Someone can get inside [Italics added] us and overhaul the very fabric of our being, we will continue to live sinful lives that grieve God.

“God provided a salvation that does more than just forgive our record of past wrongs. He provided victory over inward desires [dying to self] through the person of the [indwelling] Holy Spirit.”

(Cymbala)

Cymbala writes, “If we have been born again by the Spirit, the only way to grow to be more like Jesus is by the power of the same Spirit. As we ‘keep in step with the Spirit,’ following his motions along the daily road, he will gradually conform us into the image of God’s Son.”

The Holy Spirit interacts with people through linguistic codes within spike trains of action potentials transmitted through neural synaptic networks with meaning and purpose. I have discussed this process extensively in my books and blogs to show concordance between Scripture and neuroscience. God created Man to have an intimate and personal communion with him. Lost at the Fall, it has been restored to repentant believers by the sin sacrifice of the living Jesus Christ who sent the Holy Spirit as promised upon his resurrection to give us everlasting Life.