The Brain: An Instrument of the Soul

The brain is material: it has structure, regularities in the movement of neurons, sequences of connections. To an engineer such a device feels familiar — and that is exactly why I will say the main thing about it straight away: the brain is an instrument. A large instrument for reaching goals, containing smaller mechanisms — instruments for refining the large one. Not the master. Not “you”. An instrument.

Watch how it works with goals. When people believe they are formulating with maximum precision, they are in fact setting a “corridor” — a range of outcomes their brain will accept. Beyond two or three steps the average brain does not plan: it cannot hold a long chain of corridors. If an event falls outside the corridor, the brain changes strategy — the way a circuit switches. Knowing this mechanics is sobering: your “precision” is a corridor; your “strategy” is two or three steps.

The brain is an instrument of the soul.

Who is leading whom

In the larger sense, the brain is an instrument of the soul. It is matter, and everything it does, it does in the material world. But its information arrives from elsewhere — through the body’s feeling of what is happening: the body sends signals, and on their basis the brain makes decisions. Whatever a person arrives at, it will seem to them a triumph of their rationality. In fact it was not the brain that brought them to that point — it was the feel of the process. The brain was the navigator who drew up a handsome route map after the fact.

To use the brain for the growth of the soul, you must separate two different efficiencies: the efficiency of results — and the efficiency of your own calm. Earning money is a function of the brain. Calm, balance, kindness are the province of feeling — of knowing when you are genuinely well. Do you want a great deal of money? Then ask: will I be at peace, when and in connection with what, where will this lead, am I ready for that level of responsibility? Let one part of the brain question the part that drives the process — and listen for the body’s inner response.

It was not the brain that brought you to the point — it was the feel of the process.

Why a developed brain needs a soul

The connection is subtler than it looks. For the development of the brain itself, inner development is not required — you can build up intellect without any soul at all. But for that brain to work effectively, it is required. It comes down to how you interpret a task and what result you want from it: the more developed a person is inwardly, the more clearly they set tasks for their brain and the better they understand why they need this. The lower the level of inner development, the more dissatisfaction there is with the results of even a brilliant brain. Sound familiar? Everything worked out — and no one can say what for.

Here, too, is the answer to why “all this spirituality” exists at all: inner development is needed to raise the quality of life — comfort, calm, financial position, an understanding of what love is. And it is possible only out of love. People who take pride in never having loved anyone are not “strong” — they simply never had the desire to develop, and the corridor of their brain narrows until the only way out of it is decline.

All of life is constant change. What that change will be depends not on the power of your instrument, but on whose hand is holding it.

Inner development is possible only out of love.

Cover work — “Mind and Consciousness” →

— Evgeny Fleysher