The Brain: A Secret That Is Inaccessible To Science

Question: Current studies show that the neurons in the brain become flexible when they connect. The “matter” remains the same, but the mutual connections in it change. Is it possible to draw an analogy between the “matter” of the brain and the “matter” of the desire to receive?

Answer: We will never be able to understand the way the brain operates by using the standard “corporeal” scientific tools. I suppose that scientists already understand this. The brain depends on its current state, and so the data in this field hardly allows researchers to arrive at any statistical rules, or to find some consistency. The brain isn’t just “a kilo and half of gray matter.” It constantly changes and although we classify the functions of all its parts, they can still perform totally different functions.

At the “head” of the spiritual Partzuf, where the decisions are made, there is a Direct Light and a Returning Light, the connection between the Creator and the created being. It is the same in our brain, but on a different level. So if we don’t discover the Creator part in us, we will not be able to discover the principles of the brain’s work. This is because half of the picture can hardly be seen in the fog and we don’t know what operates it.

On the whole, we can compare our brain to a detector, to a receiver that receives signals from space around us. So there is no great significance to examine it detached from this space. If we study only the brain itself and leave its connection with the source of the data out of the picture, we will never know anything. This is because our brain perceives important external information from some field.

We are built in a definite way: Our nature is divided into the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels, we divide ourselves into Partzufim, Sefirot, to parts according to the thickness of the desire and the purity of the Masach (screen), but actually in spirituality it is all one, and everything is one wholeness where we exist. It is where the past, the present, and the future are, the three stages of our development, everything is there.

The brain activity is like a receiver or a mutual activity within a system, which I perceive only to the extent of my own bestowal. We may say that the brain is part of the general system. But actually the brain, the mind, is spread over all of Ein Sof (Infinity), which a person has to actually attain. In the meantime we only feel bits of it.

I don’t think that science will continue to follow the old approach. There will come a time when scientists will stop, change their approach, and begin to discover an upper level, just as in the past humanity moved from using a steam engine to using an internal combustion engine. Brain researchers will want to rise to the “layer of information” that is above our world. It is only from there that they will be able to carry on with their studies, whereas the current approach will lead to nothing.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/16/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”