Though I am sure almost no one is reading to the end of the comments section of this article at this late date, I can’t help throwing a few ideas into the ether…

Regarding reincarnation, as I understand it there is ongoing debate between and within the various schools of Buddhism over its existence and mechanics. While it is probably true that the belief in reincarnation may be motivated by the simple desire for death not to be the end of self, there is also a theological issue at stake. The idea is that if death really is the end, then one’s personal karma also ends at death. And if there is no self and no karma after death, then why bother striving to live a virtuous life? Why sacrifice for the greater good, or the future good? Why spend time contemplating painful truths and cultivating insight when it will all come to nought in the end and you are taking a risk in that you might die before you figure anything out anyway? So what I’ve heard or read somewhere is that the debate is delineated between those who believe that you have to have reincarnation for Buddhist practice to make any sense at all and those who believe you don’t need reincarnation in order to be motivated to practice.

So the question really boils down to a basic one that I’m sure has confronted Western philosophers for thousands of years as well. If there is no life after death, on what do you base a system of morality? How do you get people to behave? I personally am not too worried about this question, but I can see the importance of the issue in the theological/philosophical context.

Also, while it is absolutely true that self-centeredness or even narcissism may motivate certain people to seek out long meditation retreats, I suspect that those motivations are not the most common. For one thing, long meditation retreats, even of a single day, mostly suck. They are way more painful than working all day, whether in front of a computer or on a construction site or in a homeless shelter (or reading Salon articles and submitting comments). Far from being like a vacation or relaxing in a spa, a meditation retreat is more like going to jail. At least in jail you can lean against the cinder block wall, in a meditation retreat you have to hold your self upright all day long and you've got nothing to entertain you in any sensory modality and you're engaged in a near hopeless and endless exercise of guiding your attention away from your thoughts and toward your senses. I guess it's not that we don't do meditation retreats because we're too busy doing more important things, in a sense, we're too busy doing other things in order to avoid the meditation retreat.

We discover that the universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling Power that has something in common with our minds.

Sir James Jeans

The Ancient Greeks believed spuriously that their thoughts came from their hearts.

In the same way I feel that the current vogue amongst those engaged in the study of Neuroscience and Consciousness have bought into the specious dogma that thoughts, consciousness, emnates from the Brain. This as occurred has a result of cultral conditioning in my opinion. Thankfully however some of the mavericks engaged in the scientific pursuit of such questions have stumbled upon the hypothesis of ‘Cellular Memory’.

Some defectors from the ranks of scientific dogma are accepting it and helping to make sense of it. It has been given a label now, so we can discuss it. They call it Cellular Memory. Simply, it’s the idea that the brain doesn’t contain memories. The brain is likened to the transistor in a radio. Music doesn’t come from the radio, it comes through the radio. Thought doesn’t come from the brain, it comes through the brain. In the expanded model, near-term memory and current life thinkings are stored in the cell of the physical plant. What some think and we all should hope is that this

electro-chemical transistor we call a brain can not only send and receive data throughout the body, but also pull in the signals that radiate outside this limited realm

of self. It could be said that there is an extent to which we, in any moment, have “tuned in” to what is beyond us. To the extent that we develop those skills of the receiver, our levels of connectedness and feelings of purpose will occur.

You will be forgiven for thinking that this is a new hypothesis it was in fact taught by

the Jewish Mystics who held to the Kabbalah and also to the Gnostics of first century Christianity.

The brilliant neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield engaged in extensive research into the mind-brain phenomenon. His goal was to explain how consciousness emerged from

the physical matter of the brain. After many years of exhaustive research Penfield admitted he had failed:

The mind seems to act independently of the brain in the same sense that a programmer acts independently of his computer, however much he may depend upon the action of that computer for certain purposes. But who___or what__is that Programmer?

Wilder Penfield

I don’t understand these people who claim that when you are looking at a brain that is engaged in any activity that you are witnessing the brain engaged in the said activity.

This to me is nonsense, what you are witnessing is the Brain tuning into the Mind which then gives rise to the illusion that some activity is being engaged in.

Those who hold to the dualistic dogma called dualism claim that everything in the universe is material in nature thus excluding the very thing they are trying to

understand Consciousness.

The ancients understood perfectly well that Matter did not give rise to Consciousness it was in fact the other way around. This is wonderfully summed up by the Gnostic Christ:

If the body came into being because of consciousness that is a wonder, but if consciousness came in to being because of the body this is a wonder of wonders.

Jesus Christ The Gospel of Thomas