Science of the Mind in the Vedas
The human brain is the most complex organ in the human body. It produces every thought, action feeling and experience. No other brain in the animal kingdom is capable of generating the kind of higher consciousness associated with human ingenuity. The average human brain weighs in at around 3 pounds and contains about 100 billion neurons.
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The left and right sides of the brain both perform separate functions and process different stimuli.
The brain can be viewed as a fingerprint. All humans have 97% of the same DNA. Hence, we have many anatomical similarities, but also many differences - we all have similar bodies but never the same. Two human brains are also very similar, but will never be the same. In fact, you can think of it like a fingerprint. Even fingerprints from identical twins are not exactly, 100% the same, reflecting the minute differences in their DNAs.
As you may remember from a few months back, the internet was taken by storm over a debate about the color of a dress. Is it black and blue or white and gold? Turns out, it is black and blue but only 30% of quiz participants - 829,800 - saw it correctly. The other 70% of participants (1.9 million) said they saw white and gold.
These differences came to be because of how our brain processes colors. It goes to show that even if something might appear to be black and white, or in this case black and blue, no two brains comprehend information the same way.
Most of what you feel is expressed through body language. The physical body relays what your mind feels.
Neurons and chemicals are responsible for communicating between the body and mind. Neurons conduct electrical impulses around the body and work by transferring electrical charges from neuron to neuron to get from one point to another. All data, therefore, is transferred in this electrical fashion.
The average human brain has about 100 billion neurons. Each neuron may be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other via as many as 1,000 trillion synaptic connections, equivalent by some estimates to a computer with a 1 trillion bit per second processor. Estimates of the human brain’s memory capacity vary wildly from 1 to 1,000 terabytes (for comparison, the 19 million volumes in the US Library of Congress represents about 10 terabytes of data).
A mind is the set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgment and memory— characteristics of humans. Comparing the human brain to the fastest and most powerful computers in the world is a good way to major at the higher level but, yet again, research shows that even the biggest supercomputers can't hold a tiny part of what we have inside our skulls.
According to the works of renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud, there are three levels of the human mind.
Your conscious mind is what most people associate with who you are, because that is where most people live day to day. The conscious mind communicates to the outside world and the inner self through speech, pictures, writing, physical movement, and thought.
The unconscious mind is the storehouse of all memories and past experiences. The unconscious constantly communicates with the conscious mind via our subconscious, and is what provides us with the meaning to all our interactions with the world, as filtered through your beliefs and habits. It communicates through feelings, emotions, imagination, sensations, and dreams.
Our consciousness, as discussed earlier, is comprised of our wordless feelings and emotions that come to us from the right brain sense of “self” and also from our word-based left-brain and thinking Ego that was added when we developed speech. Each of us has a consciousness that comes from our mind. Our entire life is experienced by our consciousness.
The Vedas also speak of layers to one's personality. As mentioned in the previous post relating to stress, there are two types of bodies. The Sthula is a gross physical body of the soul whereas the Sukshma is subtle, psychological/ mental body, which is the concious and unconscious mind.
Indian Shastras illustrate the mind as having four elements.
Mana
- The link between Buddhi and external objects via five senses
- Imaginations and formation of concepts
- Faculty which coordinates sensory impressions before they are presented to the consciousness.
- When a person sees, hears, tests, touch and smells an object—the mana makes certain that he is conscious that it is the same object.
Buddhi
- The foundation of personality development: Our world
•Physical and mental dimensions: A bubble from the bottom is visible only when it bursts. Actions are burst of thoughts that have been developing for years.
- Decision maker
- Making judgments for good or bad, moral or immoral
- Decides positive or negative
- House of will power
Chitt
- The hard drive for memory and impressions of past experiences
- Impressions of judgments: Bad or Good
- Defines our personality
- Known as Subconscious mind
Ahankara
- “I”ness: physical and mental
- Conscious mind
- Ego and egoism - that is, the identification or attachment of one's ego
•Ego: Manifests itself by assuming authorship of all the actions of Buddhi, Mana, the senses and organs of action.
•Egoism: Ahankāra is generally a state of illusion, once in that state
These four parts of the mind make up Antakaran, the definition of you which could be looked at as your aura. Buddhi and Chitt play the most prominent role in the formation of an individual's personality. Your past actions define the present and your present actions define your past.