Moro makes the following comments at the end of his article:

“The very fact that the majority of human communication takes place via waves may not be a casual fact; after all, waves constitute the purest system of communication since they transfer information from one entity to the other without changing the structure or the composition of the two entities. They travel through us and leave us intact, but they allow us to interpret the message [by the immaterial mind] borne by their momentary [linguistically encoded] vibrations. . . .”

The author shares a very interesting finding in his article:

“. . . we found that the shape of the electric waves recorded in a non-acoustic area of the brain when linguistic expressions are being read silently preserves the same structure as those of the mechanical sound waves of air that would have been produced if those words had actually been uttered. The two families of waves where language lives physically are then closely related - so closely in fact that the two overlap independently of the presence of sound. The acoustic information . . . is part of the [neural] code from the beginning. . . . “

Perhaps this researcher is finding how we hear our thoughts! Perhaps this also applies to our hearing from the indwelling Holy Spirit via linguistic neural codes transmitted through our synaptic networks.

Andrea Moro has an article in The MIT Press Reader dated 9/6/22 entitled “What Is the Sound of Thought.” He makes very interesting comments which I will share in the next few blog posts. He addresses the “reading [of] linguistic thought directly from the brain.” He asks, “Why do we include the sounds of words in our thoughts when we think without speaking?”

Moro asks what language is made of. “When it lives outside our brain, it consists of mechanical, acoustic waves of compressed and rarefied molecules of air (i.e., sound); when it exists inside our brain, it consists of [encoded] electric waves that are the channel of communication for neurons. Waves: In either case, this is the concrete stuff of which language is physically made.” . . . This complex system translates the acoustic signal’s mechanical vibrations into electric impulses in a very sophisticated way, decomposing the complex sound waves into the basic [encoded] frequencies that characterize them. The different frequencies are then mapped onto dedicated slots in the primary auditory cortex, at which point the sound waves are replaced by [encoded] electric waves [transmitted via the process of quantum tunneling that has been explained in previous blog posts and in my books and ultimately interpreted by the immaterial cognitive mind].”

My next blog post will continue to include excerpts from this interesting article.

In my books and blogs I have discussed linguistic neural codes that make the transmission of specified information possible person to person, including between the Holy Spirit and the human cognitive mind through synaptic networks. Alexandre Hyafil and coworkers published an article in eLife in 2015 entitled “Speech Encoding by Coupled Cortical Theta and Gamma Oscillations” that addresses this process.

“Sensory signals are often made of different rhythmic streams organized at multiple timescales, which require to be processed in parallel and recombined to achieve unified perception. Speech constitutes an example of such a physical complexity, in which different rhythms index linguistic representations of different granularities, from phoneme to syllables and words. . . . We show that, in continuous speech, theta oscillations can flexibly track the syllabic rhythm and temporally organize the phoneme-level response of gamma neurons into a code that enables syllable identification. The tracking of slow speech fluctuations by theta oscillations, and its coupling to gamma-spiking activity both appeared as critical features for accurate speech encoding. . . . The auditory cortex . . . produces various ‘waves’ of electrical activity, and these waves also have a characteristic frequency . . . . One type of brain wave, called the theta rhythm, has a frequency of three to eight bursts per second, which is similar to the typical frequency of syllables in speech, and the frequency of another brain wave, the gamma rhythm, is similar to the frequency of phonemes. It has been suggested that these two brain waves may have a central role in our ability to follow speech, a process investigated by these coworkers. . . . Our network is purely bottom-up and does not include high level linguistic processes and representations, which in all likelihood plays an important role in speech perception. . . . top-down predictions play a significant role in guiding speech perception.”

Although the authors do not identify how “top-down predictions” are made that guide speech perception, it is my suggestion that the immaterial cognitive mind plays this role. Not only would the mind generate the waves identified by the authors that encode speech but also function in speech perception. It is exciting to see how neuroscience investigators are getting close to understanding dualist interaction!

Moreland addresses free will in his article:

“To say that a human is a free will being is to say that humans exercise what is called libertarian freedom. . . . A person’s choice is up to the individual . . . . [One] acts as an agent who is the first cause or ultimate originator of [their] own actions. Moreover, [one’s] reasons for acting do not partially or fully cause [their] actions. . . . Rather, [one’s] reasons are the teleological goals - the purposes or the ends - for the sake of which [one] acts.

Moreland states that “If physicalism is true, then human free will does not exist. Instead, determinism is true. . . . Further, since free acts seem to be for the sake of goals or ends, if physicalism . . . is true, there is no ultimate purpose and thus, there can be no libertarian free acts.”

I have pointed out in past blogs and in my books that it has been the intent of the Spirit of our Creator God to have a personal relationship with us. That has been, and is, His “ultimate purpose.” Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice for us has renewed our ability in repentance to have a dualist interaction, a bidirectional relationship, with the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Moreland addresses the concept of self awareness, of the “I:”

“. . . through self-awareness, one gains an awareness of the fact that “I” who was and is (and will be) present as the owner of all the [life] experiences. . . . These two facts - “I” am the owner of self-experience, and “I” am an enduring self who exists as the same possessor of all self-experience through time - show that a person is not identical to his experiences. Self (or “I”) is the thing that has them. In short, “I” is a mental substance. Only a single enduring self can relate and unify experiences, a fact that property dualists and physicalists cannot adequately account for or explain away.”

Moreland’s statements give compelling support to the immateriality of the human soul, the mind, the self, the “I.”

Dr. J. P. Moreland composed an article for the ministry Reasons To Believe (www.reasons.org) addressing the immateriality of the human soul. It was entitled “Body and Soul Part 2: Why the Soul Is Immaterial.” I will post several excerpts from his informative article which provides support for dualist interaction between the immaterial human spirit and soul (and the Holy Spirit) and the material synaptic networks of the human brain. He begins his article with the following:

“. . . a human being’s soul or self . . . is immaterial (or non-material).” Moreland states that the soul is a substance. “Substances are basic fundamental things. They are not in other things or aspects of other things. . . . Substance dualists assert that as a human, [a person] consists of an immaterial substantial soul with a physical body that is not identical to the soul. . . . substance dualists believe that the brain is a physical thing with physical properties and the mind or soul is a mental substance that has mental properties. . . . a human being’s self or ego [is] an immaterial substance that bears consciousness.”

I am posting several quotations taken from an article by Scott Youngren and published by The Think Institute. It is entitled “Metaphysics, the Matrix, and the Mind of God.” They speak to the immateriality and primacy of the Mind of God.

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, there have been two basic pictures of ultimate reality among Western intellectuals, what the Germans call a Weltanschauung, or worldview. According to one worldview, mind is the primary or ultimate reality. On this view, material reality either issues from a preexisting mind, or it is shaped by a preexistent intelligence, or both . . . This view of reality is often called idealism to indicate that ideas come first and matter comes later. Theism is the version of idealism that holds that God is the source of the ideas that gave rise to and shaped the material world.

The opposite view holds that the physical universe or nature is the ultimate reality. In this view, either matter or energy (or both) are the things from which everything else comes. They are self-existent and do not need to be created or shaped by mind . . . . In this view matter comes first, and conscious mind arrives on the scene much later and only then as a by-product of material processes and undirected evolutionary change. This worldview is called naturalism or materialism.

Stephen C. Meyer

For myself, faith begins with a realization that a supreme intelligence brought the universe into being and created man. It is not difficult for me to have this faith, for it is incontrovertible that where there is a plan there is intelligence - an orderly, unfolding universe testifies to the truth of the most majestic statement ever uttered - “In the beginning God.”

James Clerk Maxwell

God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.

Max Planck

It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less than an acquaintance with the mind of God therein expressed.

Albert Einstein

An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.

James Joule

Is intelligent mind an ultimate and irreducible feature of reality? Indeed, is it the ultimate nature of reality? Or is mind and consciousness an unforeseen and unintended product of basically material processes of evolution? If you look at the history of philosophy, it soon becomes clear that almost all the great classical philosophers took the first of these views. Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel - they all argued that the ultimate reality, often hidden under the appearances of the material world or time and space, is mind or spirit.

Srinivasa Ramanujam

In the New Story of science the whole universe - including matter, energy, space, and time - is a one-time event and had a definite beginning. But something must have always existed; for if ever absolutely nothing existed, then nothing would exist now, since nothing comes from nothing. The material universe cannot be the thing that always existed because matter had a beginning. It is 12 to 20 billion years old. This means that whatever has always existed is non-material. The only non-material reality seems to be mind. If mind is what has always existed, then matter must have been brought into existence by a mind that always was. This points to an intelligent, eternal being who created all things. Such a being is what we mean by the term God.

Sir Isaac Newton

In my recent blog post I discussed cortical activity waves that are the physical carriers of memory and thought. I have also discussed traveling waves in earlier blogs, and today I wish to post excerpts from a very recent article entitled “Traveling Waves in the Prefrontal Cortex during Working Memory.” Authors are Sayak Bhattacharya, Scott L. Brincat et al. It is published in PLOS Computational Biology, January 28, 2022.

From this article we see that traveling waves are becoming more understood as “spatially organized patterns whose peaks and troughs move sequentially across cortex. . . . waves were modulated during performance of a working memory task [and we know that cognitive tasks are actualized through neural codes learned over a lifetime and archived in memory]. During baseline conditions, waves flowed bidirectionally along a specific axis of orientation. Waves in different frequency bands could travel in different directions. During task performance, there was an increase in waves in one direction over the other, especially in the beta band. . . . Traveling waves can serve specific functions. . . . Traveling waves are of interest because they have a variety of useful properties for cognition, development and behavior. They can create timing relationships that foster spike-timing dependent plasticity and memory encoding. . . . Their functional relevance in the adult brain is suggested by observations that traveling wave characteristics can be task-dependent and that they impact behavior [I would add that these waves reflect cognitive behavior] . . . Oscillatory activity in the prefrontal cortex has been linked with cognitive functions like working memory and attention. . . . The waves did not travel in random directions. . . . Traveling waves have multiple characteristics - such as direction, phase organization, speed - all of which can serve specific functions, making these waves a potentially powerful computational tool.”

And I would add that traveling waves are a powerful functional “tool” of the intent of a cognitive mind. We are seeing in excerpts from this article that the cognitive mind generates traveling waves that are transmitted in specified directions to achieve intended objectives. I propose that the Holy Spirit can generate such waves to communicate specific objectives as well! We are perhaps seeing the process of communion between the Mind of God and the mind of Man enabled via the synaptic networks of the human brain. Yes, the Holy Spirit desires a personal bidirectional communion with us in our time as He has in the past and will going into the eternal future.

I am posting these verses from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, 3:14-19 (NIV), that are in concordance with content I have shared in my books and blogs that speak to dualist interaction between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit and soul, the synaptic network making it possible. It speaks to the boundless love of God for us:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

I am posting selected verses from the Bible that reflect the dualist interaction I discuss in my books and blogs between the indwelling Holy Spirit and the spirit and soul of repentant Man. Articles cited from the neurosciences reveal the mechanisms of neural synaptic networks through which the immaterial mind of Man and Mind of God commune. It is a concordance between science and theology for which I have hopefully provided compelling evidence.

I now post selections from 1 Corinthians 2:10-16 and 6:17 (NIV). As these verses are read it is my expectation that the reader will find that an understanding of dualist interaction gives a depth of meaning perhaps otherwise missed.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment: For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.