Are we in control?

A little while ago, my mind came across a question, which, although is very confusing, but is of vital importance nonetheless. I was actually quite stunned, that many of us live our lives and don't even think about it, although the very process of thinking, is a major part of the question.

"Is our brain controlling us, or are we controlling the brain?"

That is a question, some of us don't bother to ask ourselves, and yet, it is still such an obvious question, that it should keep on repeating itself an endless amount of times in our mind.

The question, you see, is fairly simple.

The brain is the organ of control. It is in control of everything. The fact that I am writing this, is a clear example of this very truth. Your eyes are moving to read this, and those too, are being controlled by your brain. Then, as your eyes scan these sentences they feed them into your brain, which then processes the information provided, all of this happening in a fraction of a second. The brain is ALWAYS in control.

And so the question arises.

If the brain can control everything that we do, from the smallest twitch of the eye, to the movement of our legs as we run, how then, can we be sure, that it is not in fact, controlling us.

Bear with me at this part. You see, the brain is the organ of control, that doubtlessly is true. But the question is, are we in control of brain or is it brain that is in control of us?

Here comes the tricky part. To some, both of the statements might seem remarkably alike, some might not even consider bothering to read on, because they don't care, whether it is the brain or us.

"What difference does it make?" they may say, "after all, the brain is us, and we are the brain".

That is true to an extent, except, when we consider the statement that follows.

"The mind or consciousness is a part of our soul, while the brain is a part of our body."

And so, their statement might require an amendment, of the following form.

"The mind is us, and we are the mind."

Because the mind, is the consciousness that resides within the brain, while the brain in itself is a material thing and visible, being an organ of our body.

And so we can put the rather blunt and general question given above, into a more specific one.

"Is it the mind, or the brain, that is in control?"

This question may give rise to an even more general question, that whether it is the soul or the body that is in control, but we shall not discuss it here, since it entirely deviates from the topic under discussion.

Let us go back to the main topic.

Now that we have established that the mind and the brain are two entirely separate things, we have to consider which one is controlling us.

The brain, as I see it, is basically just a host, a residence, if you will, for the mind. It is that place where the consciousness nestles itself. The brain serves as a shelter for the mind.

And so it seems that the without the brain, the mind is merely an abstract thing, that does not have a medium to control, to act. But that is not entirely true.

Let us go back to the brain.

The brain, as I mentioned before, is a concrete thing, something that possesses a definite existence (of course not in Cartesian terms but yes, it does), but it is merely a hub of messages. If we were to exclude the consciousness that resides inside the brain and then look at it, we would only see a network of impulses firing this way and that, nothing else. Without consciousness, the brain is just a muscular "thing", it can't do anything.

And so we can definitely come to the conclusion that the brain needs the mind. The mind also, as the case seems to be, needs the brain to function. For the brain is that very medium that allows the mind to interact with the outside world. Take away the mind and the brain is nothing, take away the brain, the mind (apparently) is nothing.

Now that we have decided that both the mind and the brain work simultaneously and in co-ordination with one another, we can now conclude that our actions are not just dependent on our mind, but also on our brain.

You see, what most people call following "your head", basically means that you should follow what "the brain" tells you to do, while when you follow "your heart", you actually listen to your "mind".

Our life is simply an unceasing war between mind and brain, soul and flesh.

Sometimes we follow our bodily instincts and fulfill our human desires, but at times we tend to listen to the brain, thinking everything through and then taking an important step.

And so we can say,

"We control the brain, just as much as the brain controls us"