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But What About The Brain?
By Shirley Pratt
I have been reading the January 29, 2007, issue of "Time" magazine's articles on the brain, and I find myself wanting to reply to many of the statements made by the different neuroscientists and authors who contributed to these articles. I got the sense that one of the authors felt that near-death experiences and "attempts to contact the souls of the dead" were "cheap magic tricks." I knew this was not the true picture.
I am a medium and have been for over twenty years, and during that time I have been informed by those in spirit, about many facts having to do with the spirit, the soul and the mind, as well as reading and attending conferences which included these subjects.
I suddenly found out I was a medium when trying to rescue my uncle who had not crossed over to the spiritual plane (heaven) when he died. Therefore, I did not study to be a medium, but already was one and did not know it. Mediumship is a great responsibility and I do not take it lightly.
My partners and I began doing rescues in 1984. A rescue is the process of crossing the spirit of someone who has died over into another energy plane, the spirit plane, heaven or whatever you want to call it. When the body dies the spirit can no longer exist on the earth because it still has the earth's energy, but no body. Eventually the spirit will dissipate unless it crosses over into the spirit plane. Once it crosses over it is rid of the earth's energy and can go back and forth between earth and the spirit plane as often as it wishes. Everyone has a spirit.
The spirit has a mind. When a spirit comes to us to be rescued that spirit has the mind it had on earth. If the spirit was mentally retarded, manic depressive, had Alzheimers Disease, or whatever else they might have had wrong, they sound just like they did when they were alive. The spirit is using my body and my mind to speak through me. I know they use my mind as one particular American Indian has said he uses my mind to improve his English. There is no language barrier in spirit as it is all thought. The point is the spirit no longer has the mental impediments it had when in a body once it crosses over because it no longer has that brain. But it still has the mind which is now clear; clear because it lacks the damaged physical brain. If the spirit does not cross over it still has the earth energy around it and will think and behave as it did when the body was alive, or sometimes it will misbehave because it is angry or unhappy.
Years ago I was given this message: "Your true personal inner self is your spirit and the embodiment of all that has happened to your spirit through all the universes, ages, eons that it has existed_whether you have been on earth in thousands of lives or you have been on earth in one life. It makes no difference." Our spirits are a composite of all we ever were. That means our experiences in lives on earth and our experiences on the spirit plane in between our visits to earth.
One time when a group of us were discussing what the spirit actually is, I began channeling this information. It was a great surprise to us as we knew nothing about fragments. "Your spirit, your inner being, is made up of fragments as well as the original core of it. The fragments are not the same in number. It depends on what has happened to you in the past. The fragments adhere to you and become part of you and they may have been part of other spirits at other times. And you may lose a fragment of your spirit or more than one fragment. It is entirely possible. It often happens. Not while you are on the earthly plane, but when you are experiencing that which occurs in our unlimited and indescribable multi-faceted plane which you will discover again and have known before in your travels."
When given this description of the spirit I began to think of it as similar to an artichoke where some of the petals leave to attach to other spirits, and new petals, from other spirits, then attach themselves to my own spirit.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, wrote "The Psychic Quest" in 1924. He had given up his practice of medicine to write and lecture all over the world. In the chapter "In Memories & Adventures" he tells of his thirty years of study of psychic phenomena and the evidence given him "of the continuation of life." He further states "It is hard when a man has taught all his life that the brain governs spirit to have to learn after all that it may be spirit which acts independently of the human brain."
When my partner and I do rescues, and a spirit comes to be rescued that spirit uses my mind. I know what it is thinking. The spirit knows what I am thinking. How can that be explained? How involved is the brain in this procedure? What fascinating problems could the scientists think up if they could only believe?
THE SOUL
The soul, I have been told, is universal. We are all connected by our souls. We are all part of the universal soul. The last time I asked my guides the definition of the soul they said that "the soul is the essence of all beings. The soul is part of all the souls. It is another entity altogether. The soul lives on even though the spirit may die into nothingness. (If it does not leave the earth plane and cross over to the spirit plane.) The soul is universal energy of a different type. It may be unknown to you, but it is known to other souls which all comprise the universal soul." This is one of many similar answers I have received over the years, but they are all the same in that I am told the soul is universal and the spirit is individual. We each have our own spirit.
I do have a problem with the definition of soul. It is all right to say the soul is universal, but what is meant by that? I asked for guidance with this definition and this is what I was told. "The soul is all that is within and without. It is not the spirit which is a single entity, but it is a wholeness that is encompassing all the souls in existence. It is an unexplainable feeling of oneness with all human beings, all creatures and beyond. What we can see of each other and of the earth and its creatures is only part of the whole story and the soul is beyond that. It is definitely not part of the spirit. As you well know the spirit is the individual being within each of us that lives on after the body dies. The spirit may not last forever, but the soul will as it is part of the universe; part of the universal being of all that exists_not just man, but all living things."
When I was in the middle of writing this article I thought I would again ask my guides for help with the definition of the soul. I was given a slightly different explanation, but along the same vein. "It is like what you think and not like you think. The soul is beyond all human comprehension and you will understand better when you are in spirit, but it is a thread of life thought that the whole world is connected to and this thread of thought connects all human beings." I think it is my soul that feels the pain of all those in the world who are suffering.
THE MIND
Now to the mind which we really cannot separate from the rest of our being as it lives on as does the spirit and the soul. In this same reply that I just mentioned my guides gave me quite a long answer to the definition of the mind. "The mind is a separate entity from the brain. It is a vehicle of thought. It manufactures the thought. It contains the thought after it is manufactured. It sends the thought out to other entities whether they be human beings, spirits of people and animals, animals, plants, trees; anything, any place, anywhere.
The brain is the electrical machine that runs the body and though scientists do not really know what thought is, they do have an idea that it is contained within the brain, carried by the brain, and transmitted by the brain. But that is not correct. The car is driven by a person. The car does what the person tells or wants it to do.
The brain acts in the same way. The mind tells the brain what to do. That includes emotions (mental action) as well as physical action. Those who study the brain still have much to learn and it is difficult for them to understand just how all this works. The mind is weightless and something that will not be understood among men on earth. They will have to be out of their bodies and on a spiritual level in order to discover just how their mind works.
If you think about all those in spirit who have spoken through legitimate mediums and discovered they could use their own minds and those of the mediums, it would be difficult to deny that there is something beyond the grave that is very powerful, but very difficult to define.
If I did hear what was said during a rescue, when the spirit is in me, my mind would remember it. Sometimes the spirit will tell my partner what I am thinking, so I try not to think. Once in a while I will be having a lot of thought and the spirit will have a hard time thinking and talking and will complain there is too much clutter in Shirley's mind.
How involved is the brain in this procedure? Since the spirits always use the word mind and they don't have a brain anymore, it stands to reason that it is the mind that is the dominant factor in everything we do and the brain is dictated by the mind.
Many scientists have worked on projects that have involved changing the brain by influencing the mind, and in Sharon Bagley's article in this issue of "Time" she writes about an experiement where people learned to play the piano by practicing on pianos and another group of people only mentally went through the process of practicing. The brain of both sets of volunteers showed alterations. But weren't the actual thoughts the mechanism that altered the brain? Isn't the brain the electrical machinery that puts the mind's thoughts in motion?
A well known scientist, who had been dead for many years, came to speak to one of his colleagues one day, using me as his means of communication. He told his fellow scientist that on the spirit plane everything was known, but that scientists on earth have to have the actual reality as proof before they can believe something. So, in using the brain scientists can test what is happening by the subject's response, "but they don't know the whole story and they probably never will in their experiments," he said.
What about the unusual things that have happened because the minds of a group of people were all thinking the same thing-putting out the same thoughts-sending out the same energy directed in the same direction? Alice Yeager, founder of the Peace Novella, says, "If enough people think peace, then peace will happen...there is a stream of universal consciousness that flows through each of us that when tapped into as a collective pool, shifts reality itself."
I belong to a healing circle and sometimes when we have sent our healing thoughts to a person in need, the person will tell us they have felt the healing. And, of course, there is more strength in numbers. When I had some questions about the mind one of my guides answered, "Yes, you are correct. The mind can still think when the spirit has left the body." This I know from being a medium.
My friend who found herself floating up near the ceiling of a hospital room after having surgery, said she knew she had the choice of leaving or coming back into her body. She said she felt wonderful, but she thought about her little children growing up without their mother and decided she had to come back into her body.
My guide continued. "The mind and the spirit are not the same thing. They are integrated and yet they are not integrated. The spirit knows what the mind thinks because the spirit puts the thoughts there, but the mind is the mechanism for the thought. You can think when your spirit has gone to another place. The mind is both spiritual and physical. And that will give you something to think about." So, again, I took that to mean the mind directs the brain.
In the book "Understanding The Bible, An Introduction For Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals," by John A. Buehrens, Rev. Buehrens has taken an excerpt from a translated version of "The Gospel of Mary" where Peter is speaking with Mary (Magdalene) after the death of Jesus and he asks her what words Jesus spoke that she remembers. She said Jesus had said in a vision she'd had "Blessed are you that you did not waver at the sight of me. For where the mind is, there is the treasure." Mary then asked, "Lord, now does he who sees the vision see it (through) the soul (or) through the spirit?" Jesus' reply was "He does not see through the soul nor through the spirit, but the mind which (is) between the two..." I like this definition so much I feel I should end here.
In the book "A Whole New Mind-Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future," the author, Daniel H. Pink, explains the difference in right-brain thought to that of left-brain thought: "The left hemisphere analyzes the details, "the right hemisphere synthesizes the big picture." Both sides are needed. Where does the mind come into this? Can it only deal with one side at a time? I think he uses the words brain and mind interchangeably. Pink encourages people who are left-brained to study and take courses to become more right-brained. But why not use your mind to change to a more broader perspective than take courses? Since the mind controls the brain just think it out. That is what the people learning to play the piano did.It is in the brain structure, not the mind, that diseases like Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, dementia are observed as well as mental retardation. When the body dies and the spirit leaves the body all these mental problems are also left behind. But in our rescue work I've noticed that the brain does not lose these problems until the spirit has crossed over to the spirit plane (heaven). This is because the spirit of the dead person is still existing surrounded by the earth energy and is still him (or her) self as he was when he was alive. The spirit needs to cross over in order to rid itself of this energy.
Neuroscientists, through the use of machines like MRIs, can tell what people are thinking. How about caffeine, alcohol, and other drugs affecting what people think and do? Are they actually changing the brain physically and thus blocking the mind? The author states "when the physiological activity of the brain ceases, as far as anyone can tell the person's consciousness goes out of existence." But most scientists, in this case, don't seem to know that the mind continues to exist. Otherwise, how could spirits speak through me using my mind as a vehicle (so the spirits say); using their minds also. I think that the word consciousness should probably be linked with the brain and not the mind.
My mother-in-law was in a coma for four days. One day when we were standing around her bedside hoping she would regain consciousness, she suddenly began conversing with someone. The words were very distinct and we looked in the direction she was facing, but no one saw anyone. We're sure she was speaking to the spirit of a loved one. There was nothing wrong with her mind at that point. If an electroencephalograph had been used it would have shown what the brain was doing, but not the mind. So, is consciousness, therefore, a product of the brain and not the mind?
"Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary" defines the mind as "a .the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and esp. reasons b: the conscious mental events and capabilities in an organism c; the organized conscious and unconscious adaptive mental activity of an organism."
This same dictionary declares consciousness as "a: the quality or state of being aware esp. of something within oneself 2: the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought: MIND" I think the dictionary "hit it on the head" more accurately than the neuroscientists.
I thought I was at the end of this when the April 29, 2007 edition of the "Boston Sunday Globe" presented an article by Jonah Lehrer entitled "Hearts and Minds" and gave me "more food for thought." He states that fifty years ago Noam Chomsky said it was possible to study the actual process of thought and that was the beginning of a new revolution in this field of study. Nowadays thinking and feeling are linked together, not separated as they once were. Technology has made it possible to study the brain more accurately. Psychologists have gained information on how a person can memorize and how they can learn, but since emotions were not part of the experiments, cognitive psychologists didn't feel that these experiments on the brain were scientific enough. Early on the focus was more on the computer-like tendencies of the mind.
The author writes about a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, Antonio Damasio, who worked with brain injured patients. He found that they had emotional problems they did not seem able to solve. Therefore, he reasoned that in order to think properly they needed feelings. Several researchers have come to the conclusion that because the brain showed certain kinds of activity in emotional questions, that the emotions rule the mental thought. The area of the brain acting and reacting can be monitored.
In his conclusion, the author writes, "Feelings can be seen as responses to facts...can also be thought of as messages from the unconscious...they are the necessary foundation of thought." But I found this contradictory as it seems he is saying feelings are the result of thought (the mind) and then he states they are the "foundation for thought." But it is obvious in this article that the researchers feel that the emotions the brain records are the basis for the mind; usually referred to as thought.
In a small article at the bottom of the page, Johan Lehrer, sums it all up for himself when he says, "our unconscious emotions are influencing our decisions and shaping our judgment." What the machine shows is what the researcher will use as his evidence for the emotions being the foundation for the mind. He cannot possibly measure the mind.
When spirits come through me when I act as a transchannel medium and they talk about still having their own mind, or using my mind; when I can read a spirit's mind, it is proof enough for me that the mind lives on with the spirit, that the mind is a special entity, and that the mind is the guidance system for the brain which is the electrical system for the physical body and the emotions, as they are actually physical, also.
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