Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Rambling Meditations on what it means to exist what do you think? Written by Bart Ehrman, Read by Ken I sometimes feel like a pestiferous terrier who goes after someone's ankles and just won't stop. There are some issues among the big questions that I repeatedly come back to and just can't let drop. I suppose that's because they seem both really important and completely incapable of being figured out, hence my occasional return to them on the blog.
[00:00:37] I've mentioned before that I have a daily meditation practice which does wonders for my stress levels and mental, emotional, psychological well being, though it does sometimes leave me puzzled. This morning I did one of those go deep into your mind sessions where you just dig deep into your conscience and try to understand who or what you are as a living being.
[00:01:02] As often happens when I do that, I once more again came up against the issue of what I can possibly be.
[00:01:11] I feel like I am somehow located in my brain and I don't think that I will exist once my brain, along with the rest of my body dies, since it's quite clear that who I am can change with the flick of a surgeon's scalpel in one of those remote hidden places inside my skull. So I don't think there is some kind of essential me that exists no matter what, or that there is some kind of non material entity in my noggin or anywhere else in me. Without the brain I don't exist and when the hard wiring in the brain changes through the knife or from playing too many years as a defensive tackle in the NFL, though I'm not exactly the defensive tackle type, then I am a different me.
[00:02:02] I think a lot about the brain, especially in meditation sessions like this. I don't have the smarts brains to be a neurologist, but I certainly wish I did. There's almost nothing more fascinating in the known universe. What often strikes me is how multi dimensional and multifunctional the brain is.
[00:02:23] Apart from my thoughts, reasoning abilities, memories, moods, emotions, feelings, personality characteristics and and and my brain controls almost all of my bodily functions without my having any say in the matter. I can control my breath and thus the workings of my respiratory system to some limited extent, but apart from that my internal organs just do their thing as needed, almost entirely controlled by the brain. But sometimes I do have a say, and that's where it gets tricky. I can decide to scratch my head or eat a burger or peck away at the keyboard. I can think I am now going to do a push up and I can then do it, hopefully More than one. It's my decision.
[00:03:13] So too, I can try to choose to remember something. I can consider something right or wrong. I can do math.
[00:03:23] But what is making the decision?
[00:03:26] I am. But what am I?
[00:03:30] My brain makes the decision. But is there a person behind the curtain?
[00:03:35] I don't think so. So how does it work exactly?
[00:03:40] Like most human beings, I have some 80 to 100 billion neurons in my brain. It's all neurons and their associates. The neurons themselves are simply cells. And the cells are somehow living, as are all the other cells in my body. What, 30 trillion of them? But what does it mean for them to be living? I mean, I know what it means. I can look it up on the Internet as well as anyone. But what does it actually mean? None of those cells knows it's alive. Every one of them is made up of a gazillion molecules. The molecules don't think, reflect, or know they are living. The molecules are made up of atoms, which, unlike the molecules, tissues, organs, and me apparently are going to be around pretty much forever. Even though neither they nor the molecules they make up are alive. The cells that they make up are alive. I know these cells and I are alive. But they themselves don't. None of them. So how's that work exactly?
[00:04:47] And if there is nothing at the foundation but dead molecules that can't think, remember, judge, or choose what to do with themselves, how so I.
[00:04:58] How, for example, do I make decisions? What exactly is making them? There's nothing but the dead molecules inside. And how am I remembering? How am I thinking, feeling, acting, existing? If all I'm made up of are a gazillion molecules that aren't living, made up of atoms that aren't living, where does the will and seemingly freedom to make a decision come from?
[00:05:25] Moreover, when I die, all the cells will die, the molecules will decay, and the atoms they comprise will go along in their merry way somewhere else. Never much to change, probably for roughly ever. But I won't be. Only the lifeless atoms that make up me and that are the only things that make up me will go on. But me. Yeah, no, that's not a scary thought for me, just very sad. But I'm still left trying to figure out how these lifeless atoms and molecules make up ignorant cells that make up organs, including my brain, which, unlike anything else, can think, remember and exercise a will. When it decides what exactly is making the decision, how can it have a will? I'm being redundant and rambling because I'm choosing to be.
[00:06:21] Well, ponder some of that deeply and you'll have a nice 20 minute meditation session and. Or let me know what you think or what you imagine you think.
