I had a very profound experience in my early teenage years that has been a source of inquiry and pondering every since it happened. I remember one day standing in front of the mirror in the hallway bathroom in my home. I looked into my own eyes and had a very deep excitement start deep in my and it seemed to spread throughout the rest of me. It was odd because it was also accompanied by a small degree of frustration. The thoughts accompanying this feeling were, 'This is really me!' 'I cannot believe I'm actually here having this experience (meaning life as a whole)' and 'This is actually real!' This experience repeated its self several times and looking back I have dissected and analyzed what happened and used how I was feeling and thinking to understand better questions that each of us seek after. Philosophical questions really such was 'What is me?' 'How did I come into being?' 'Why do I feel like I am WITHIN my body?'. As I further my education in fields of philosophy, psychology, science, and spirituality I have found knowledge and information which has led me to the conclusion though out intelligent experience has several different levels, each level combined defining who we are at this present moment of mortality. For me there are four different levels of 'being' physical, neurological, mental, and spiritual. I will endeavor to explain how each level contributes to our intelligent experience ( I do not say cognitive or mortal because both are limited and my explanations will involve a timeline which goes beyond the reaches of cognation and mortally). I will appeal to the three disciplines of knowledge. Science, which defines laws and relationships between physical objects as know to use through experimentation and observation. Philosophy, which is the rational and logical 'conclusions' the brilliant minds of men have come to concerning questions that science has not yet found a way to answer. And theology, information given to us through revelation, more specifically I will appeal to the revelations I believe to have been given to us through the merciful God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who sent His only Begotten Son Jesus Christ as an example and an Atoner, who restored His gospel once again to this earth through His chosen prophet Joseph Smith. Is that specific enough?
The first level of intelligent experience that we have is on a physical, perceptual level. I'm talking about our basic senses and the experiences that they afford us. Last semester I took an introduction to psychology class and one of the chapters that we studies was all about how our body perceives and understands the world around us. For instance right now I am typing this while listening to a random station I found and liked on Spotify. My macbook speakers create sounds waves which find themselves into my ears. As these waves enter my inner ear they hit tiny hairs. At the root of these hairs are little sensory cells which monitor the vibrations in the hair caused by the sounds waves. They then report these vibrations in a message to the brain telling it what they observed. Or our eyes. Brilliant little things they are! Light enters into our eyes and is focused onto the back of our retina. Little cells call cones and rod report the intensity of light including the wavelength and frequency of the light waves then report their findings to the brain.
Which brings me then to our next level of experience. Everything that we have a conscious knowledge of experiencing is all second hand. All of our perceptions are an 'image' created by our brain as an interpretation of information provided by neurological transmissions sent from our sensory cells which were activated by physical stimuli. Crazy when you think about it. Sometimes when I think about it I am super grateful for how wonderful my body and brain are! The fact that I can have so many different parts working together at the same time to create a seemingly singular experience which is in fact dozens of different experiences simultaneously observed and fused together is a truly awesome thing to realize. This is the function of the brain. It works as a transformer and relayor of information. It transforms neurotransmissions into a cognitive experience which our mind is able to manipulate, predict, and evaluate. The brain is an amazing processing organ, receiving and sending thousands of messages constantly all at the same time. I think of it as a relay station but but instead of different employees running around carrying memos it has areas which are in charge of certain functions. The down fall is that it is mortal and is subject to corruption. We see it all the time with addiction, mental illnesses and injuries. It is more or less scientific fact that brain damage or abnormalities can lead to partial or complete cognitive and behavioral changes. However contrary to what this supports I feel that the mind and the brain are different therefore cognitive and neurological activity are different though very closely related. The brain is a two-way relayor between the mind and the body. For the most part the brain can handle the day to day mundane commands and maintenances necessary for the body function correctly, however, when a decision is to be made it it turns to the mind who then will make a decision, and tell the brain who then tells the body how to react. Now this is how I rectify the contradiction that though the health of the brain directly effects mental capabilities the brain is different and separate from the mind. As a brain and certain nerves are damaged the brain become incapable of communicating with body, resulting is paralysis. In a very similar way as the brain is damaged its ability to communicate accurately with the mind is limited. We have drugs that can temporarily do this for us. we use them almost every time we 'go under' for surgery. I am talking about our unconscious state, a state where the brain and mind are not connected and communicating. This is a total separation, but there can also be partial separations. Alcohol consumption we know limits our judgment, reasoning ability, balance and perception. This is because it is a poison that damages and disrupts our brain-mind connection and the brain-body connection. There is a story of a railway foreman, a good respectable man, who had a gruesome injury in which a metal tamping rod went through his head causing sever damage to his frontal lobe. After the injury "Gabe was no longer Gabe". Whatever was good about this foreman was lost. Rather then being temperate and moderate he began irrational and extreme. He was completely aware of his decisions but was making completely different ones then he always had in the past. I theorize this is because the 'satellite' in his brain that was used to communicate inhibitions, reverence, and respect from the mind was destroyed rendering him incapable to used that information in his decision making. In the absence of restraint from the mind, the brain reverted to its primal programing in the decision making process and the natural instincts to procreate, and fight for survival dominated the 'court room'.
Our intelligent experience has many layers, each deeply connected to the other. As we understand them better we can learn how we can make the best decisions possible and learn how to best communicate with ourselves. Science can tell us just how the body and brain communicate with each other to create a tangible and cognitive experience. However our experience goes deeper then that and until science catches up we must rely on philosophy and theology to learn how our mind is connected to our feelings and how both our feelings and mind communicate with our spirit.
