What is the Mind?
A device? An organ? A virtual construct?
Where exactly is mind located?
Where does the mind reside? It’s a question that’s occupied the best brains for thousands of years. Now, a patient who is self-aware – despite lacking three regions of the brain thought to be essential for self-awareness – demonstrates that the mind remains as elusive as ever.
The finding suggests that mental functions might not be tied to fixed brain regions. Instead, the mind might be more like a virtual machine running on distributed computers, with brain resources allocated in a flexible manner, says David Rudrauf at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who led the study of the patient.
Self-awareness and other high-level cognitive functions probably do not relate to the brain in a simple way, says Rudrauf. “They involve layers of abstraction and mechanisms that cannot be explained by standard functional-neuroanatomy.” He suggests that there are fundamental mechanisms yet to be discovered. “We would all like simple answers to complicated questions, and we tend to oversimplify our conceptions about the brain and the mind,” he says.
Linda Clare, a psychologist at Bangor University, UK, is also not surprised by the finding. “Awareness has many manifestations,” she says. “It’s not just a matter of a few brain cells.”
The Mystics have a different take. Sadhguru says:
In yoga, we don’t see the mind being in any one particular place because in yoga we see a human being as five sheaths or five layers of bodies. These are known as Annamaya kosha, Manomaya kosha, Pranamaya kosha, Vigyanamaya kosha and Anandamaya kosha. Translating it into English would mean, Annamaya kosha means food body. The body, the physical body that you have is just the accumulation of food that you have eaten. It is something that you gather. Manomaya kosha means a layer of intelligence which is capable of accumulating knowledge. But there is a layer of intelligence. It is not here (Gestures) or here (Gestures), here, somewhere. Every cell in the body has its own intelligence. Yes or no? If a bacteria or virus enters your body do your cell phones call you up on your cell phone and ask you whether to welcome them or destroy them? They will just do what they have to do because they have their own intelligence.
So intelligence is all across. Accumulation of knowledge is all across. When I say this, people will always think, generally the thought is memory means it’s in your head. No, no, no. Your body has a million-fold more memory than your mind. Right now, your great grandfather’s nose is sitting on your face because something in the body remembers. Isn’t it? Yes or no? A million years ago how your forefathers looked, unknowingly still your hair is like that, your texture of the skin is like this, your complexion is like this. Your body remembers. Your body remembers a million-fold more than your mind can ever imagine. So, both in terms of intelligence right now what is happening in a single cell in your body, can you logically, mentally or intellectually decipher what’s happening in one cell in your body? One molecule of DNA what’s happening is too much to know.
So the intelligence and the memory in the body is way beyond what happens in the bone box that you call as your head. It is just that this part (Gestures) of your intelligence can generate thought and because you have become very attached to your thought, you think intelligence is all coming from here. No. This (Referring to the rest of the body) is exuding much more intelligence than your brain can ever think of. This is the science of yoga.
Quite a complicated answer, but very interesting!
Let us take another view. Let us state simply that Mind is an organ where "thought" is born. Now, we still do not know how the physical organ called "brain" creates a construct called "Mind". However, we do have access to observing how a thought is born.