BRAIN LAYER CAKE
The human brain is in layers like a round three-layer cake, or like a three-layer baseball, or perhaps like an apple- seeds, core, and fruit.
Brain scientists call this brain model The Triune Brain - 3 brains in one. (This way of looking at the human brain introduced by Dr. Paul MacLean, director of The Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior).
The most inner section, like the hard seeds of an apple, is called the reptile brain, because it looks like and functions like the brains of snakes, lizards, and reptiles. It computes only basic survival, self-defense and counter-attack. Famous Neuroscientist joke: "The reptile brain computes the four F's of behavior- fighting, fleeing, feeding and reproduction." It merely reacts with the rest of the universe- no thinking, no new ideas- just reacting with the ancient primeval programming "It is 100% competitive consciousness, and only computes 'me-me-me' types of behavior"
The next layer surrounding that is the mammal brain, like the core of an apple around the reptile brain seeds. It adds on emotions and very basic social behaviors, and allows you to function on the same level as your pet dog or cat. It allows you to do things with other individuals like wolves in a pack. The human mammal brain also contains the brain's gateway switches that control the flow of energy to higher more advanced parts of the brain.
The outermost layer of the brain is called the primate brain and frontal lobes. It makes up 5/6 of the total volume of our human brain. It computes the most complex, refined, and advanced human behaviors. It computes abstract thought, concepts of time, and planning. It computes "CICIL": Creativity, Imagination, Cooperation, Intuition, Logic. It is the part of the brain responsible for the "transcendence phenomenon" ("Eureka!!"), and for human paranormal abilities like precognition and telepathy.
Here is a way of looking how energy flows through the brain layers:
The universe is filled with all kinds of energy, and it all reaches your body and enters in various sense organs, through your eyes, through your fingers and toes, in your ears, on your tongue, through food, in air, all around you twenty-four hours a day. It first rolls around in the more primitive parts of your brain so even while you're sleeping , your heart and lungs and temperature, and things like basic body maintenance is regulated. Additionally, when you are awake, your reptile brain first receives external energy and stimulation signals via your spinal cord. (The reptile brain sits atop your spinal cord.)
When you wake up in the morning and become conscious on this material plane there is a little switch that clicks on in your reptile brain. This is called the reticular activating formation (RAF). When it is off, you are asleep or in a coma. When it's on, you wake up and you walk around absorbing incoming signals and stimulus.
Consciousness enters the reptile brain past the RAF, through LAYER ONE-, and you compute basic survival: "Eat breakfast, don't walk in front of milk truck." Then it flows and up and out to LAYER TWO- the mammal brain. Here, you then compute this basic sensory information and transform it into basic emotions and basic social responses: "Ugh, time to go to work." or alternatively "Wow! It's Saturday!"
At this point it reaches various brain gateways, filters and switches and this consciousness energy is then sent to other parts of your brain accordingly. Some of it is stored as short-term memory, some makes enough of an impression that it eventually is solidified as long term memory. Some of this brain energy is recomputed into more emotions. A trickle will get through to LAYER THREE, your frontal lobes and primate brain, usually just enough to allow you to plan lunch and read the paper. Or it can get blocked and stop.
Typically weak brain energy is like a rocket ship without enough fuel or force to reach escape velocity and achieve its mission among the stars. It is like a ball that has been thrown into the air, it reverses direction and plummets backwards- in this case back into reptile brain's "nothing new is happening" circuits. Insufficient forward brain energy movement to achieve escape from the primitive reptile brain results in negative emotions of boredom, monotony, loneliness, and meaninglessness.
HOWEVER- When increased amounts of this electrochemical energy are sent forward to your frontal lobes- when you have an 8 lane highway of neurocircuits open to your frontal lobes, the traffic jam is freed up.....!POP! Brain Bingo! Brain Escape Velocity. "Eureka! Now I get it!" FUNNNN!
Now- one reason the floodgates aren't automatically always totally open to your frontal lobes is that we have to filter out most of the information that goes to you forebrain, or we would be overwhelmed with data all the time. You naturally filter out 99.999% of the stuff surrounding you because if you didn't you wouldn't get anything done, much less get any sleep. This is why a person who takes a psychedelic drug that removes these filters is so overwhelmed by the complexity (and the astounding beauty) of the world around him. It is also why this person can't do much of anything while in this state, besides gawk at the wonder of everything.
As biological creatures we have to perform single tasks to survive in a physical world. So we filter out things in our brain that are essential to our survival.
If suddenly you woke up and you had telepathy with the entire universe and God was talking directly to you from every dust particle in your living room, you might never make it out your front door to the supermarket. People would say you were nuts.
For many it's also scary to think we are all connected, that the universe is all connected. It would force a whole rethink of nearly every single institution, government, power structure, educational institution, distribution of wealth. Completely open and unfiltered awareness is scary for reptilian thinking humans. It's an evolutionary quantum leap.
This filtering happens in various brain gateways and click switches. What happens is that just a TRICKLE of the available data in our environment and in the universe makes it to our frontal lobes for further use and computations. We block out most of it because to achieve plain survival these days, we don't have to think very much.
We block out universal information on a zillion different frequencies like a coffee filter, or like a river dam. Cultural conditioning- what we learn from society and from our parents- determines how much we filter out.
Babies are born with their click switches wide open, at least much more open than adults' are. But as infants grow, they are trained to suppress more and more of the information to conform to expectations and social restraints. We train our kid's brains to behave and conform to social norms, but at the same time , this also traps and filters creativity, imagination, and pleasure.
Schools, parents, peer groups all re-train our brain to block out the full force of brain consciousness energy. We get stuck defending ourselves, restricting unhampered thought just so we don't get clobbered. We learn to play it safe- because we are largely living in a threatening world where creativity and individuality is not encouraged- and fitting in and conforming to society is. Society encourages safe and predictable behavior and what it knows works to keep that plain old survival intact. Society does not as a rule encourage exploration or deviation from the norm. As a rule, humans teach their babies to keep the amygdala clicked backward.
As kids we are fully connected, ready to explore the universe, but as we age, it's like unplugging one spark plug wire at a time on an engine until only one wire is left connected. Putt putt.............putt.
Multiply disconnected frontal lobes times 1 human brain and you get boredom, loneliness, job frustration, romantic troubles, disease, depression, psychosis, ax murderer, kid with a gun in the cafeteria. Multiply that times 6 billion humans and you get pollution, crime, nuclear threats, war, climate change, end of the planet.
When a person learns to reverse the negative cultural conditioning and frees the plugged up, short circuited bound energy in the brain, and move it freely and forward once again into the advanced thinking frontal lobes-
Multiplied by one person you get creativity, intelligence, pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, excitement, health, longevity, and eventually telepathy, telekinesis, pre-cognition, clairvoyance, nirvana. Multiply that time 6 billion humans and you get end of war, clean environment, stabilized growth, global prosperity, and then the spaceships will start landing on the front lawn of the White House (the planet will look safe to outsiders).
Revolt against boring dead-end cultural conformity. Fearlessly go where you haven't gone before:
Think of something you have never done before. Ever.
Do something DIFFERENT that is sure to cause a Quick !POP! in your brain.
Create something new! Imagine yourself doing something different!
Cooperate and engage with somebody and surprise them! Just DO IT.
The list is endless:
Go someplace new. Look at a new kind of book. Talk to a new person.
Cook a new dish. Write a new poem. Buy a new game and play it.
Walk in a new part of town. Paint your wall a wild color.
Pencil in here: Today, I will do this completely new (for me) thing:
