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relationship of brain to consciousness has been posed in terms of mind and brain, or mind and matter. In this book, I take the position that consciousness is more fundamental than mind and brain, and that mind is like a bubble in magnitude to the ocean of consciousness— consciousness actually creating mind and brain. As earlier observers were unclear in differentiating between consciousness and mind, perhaps we may more profitably substitute the word “consciousness” for “mind” in their statements. In my opinion it is the properties of consciousness, and not mind, that early onlookers concluded weren’t attributable to brain.
Dr. Wilder Penfield, a leading brain researcher and neuro- surgeon, worked for over fifty years to prove that brain accounted for mind (consciousness). The problems involved in the attempt to account for consciousness at last brought him to this perspective: “In the end I conclude that there is no good evidence, in spite of new methods, such as the employment of stimulating electrodes, the study of conscious patients and the analysis of epileptic attacks, that the brain alone can carry out the work that the mind does. I conclude that it is easier to rationalize man’s being on the basis of two elements than on the basis of one.”3
Dr. Candace Pert, of the Biological Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, believes that one day soon neuroscience will be capable of making a color-coded map of the brain. However, she denies that such a diagram could account for consciousness. “Just as a person could totally understand a television set—could take it apart and put it together again—but understand nothing about electromagnetic radiation, we could study the brain as input-output: sensory input, behavior output. We make maps, but we should never confuse the map with the territory. I’ve stopped seeing the brain as the end of the line. It’s a receiver, an amplifier, a little, wet mini-receiver for collective reality.” And what of consciousness? “Consciousness,” Pert asserts, “is before the brain, I think. A lot of people believe in life after death, and the brain may not be necessary to consciousness. Consciousness may be projected to different places. It’s like trying to describe what happens when three people have an incredible conversation together. It’s almost as if there were a fourth or fifth person there; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”4
At long last consciousness research is coming to be held in high