Ego Soul and the Two Minds

 [note to the reader:  This is the draft I used when I shot my YouTube Video, however, although this Blog went through quite a few Rewrite Edits, still, there is something about the Pressure of Doing the Shoot that clarifies the mind, and I changed a few words and phrases during the Video Recording, but essentially this is the script for the Video, but if the Video itself were to be transcribed, then THAT would become the official Reading.]

1   Hi Everybody, this is Leo Volont.  I got a New Video for you all, and I think I’ll put this in the same Playing List as my “Material Mechanics of Spirituality”  Series.   You see, since I’ve taken up Dancing as a steady discipline I’ve noticed that I seem to have two Minds, for my one body.  Of course, my ordinary Mind, the one that delivers the running narrative of my life, you know, with planning ahead, mulling over the past, and worrying about the present, well, that Mind certainly seems to be dominant most of the time.   But while dancing, much of what I do seems to be driven by intelligent impulse, or what I had called ‘Intuition’ in some of my previous Videos, most notably in the Third Part of my  “The White Light Paramahamsa Swan Dream” Series.  There I spoke of Intuition as being something of a Spiritual Gift, but perhaps here I can bring my explanation down a bit closer to Earth, with materialistic explanations in terms of Neuro-Biology that are still so fresh from their Research that I’d doubt if you’d be able to find them yet in any of the newer Text Books.   

 

2  Yes, what was getting my attention while Dancing was that I was no longer feeling as though I were getting single discrete momentary intuitions and following them, as that I was really just depending upon a continuous flow of intuition to carry me through intricate routines of spontaneously arising choreography, hitting all the marks on their precise beats, and it just became undeniable that there had to be some mental intelligence involved in setting all that up somehow.  But the Flow of Intuition was wordless, and also without image or concept – nothing like the usual thinking process.  There was only some Silent Will to Action directing me, putting me through my paces.  Well, it became all too curious to ignore, and so I decided to crack a few books and do a few searches to see if I could piece together what was actually going on.

 

3   Well, I found that my source of Intuition is the Cerebellum, which is what the experts call the “little Brain”.   It’s back below the rest of the Brain, just behind the Brain Stem.   It’s just one tenth the size of the rest of the Main Brain, the Cerebral Cortex, but it’s densely built and tightly packed, containing from 50 to 80% of all the brain cells in the entire brain.  Then, if we can extrapolate between Computer Science and Neural Science, we could conclude that because the Brain Cells of the Cerebellum are so much closer together than those of the Main Brain, that we could expect the processing times for the Smaller Denser Cerebellum to be much faster, though none of my searches revealed the exact Clock Speed of the Cerebellum. 

 

4   Also, it occurred to me that there is an important distinction between Reaction Time, a voluntary function governed by the Main Brain, and the much faster involuntary Reflexes, which we will soon be very much interested in, and, yes, they source from out of the “Little Brain” Cerebellum.  Yes, the experts tell us that the Cerebellum is essential for learning Motor Skills.  However, I was only able to find a few limited studies that could connect Impulsive Reflex Actions to the Cerebellum, but why should the Scientific Community spend too much money on expensive experiments if we could reasonable conclude that no other part of the Brain could plausibly be responsible for them.

 

5   But perhaps that’d be easier to understand if we knew what else the Experts tell us that the Little Brain Cerebellum is responsible for, that it works with sensory data from the eyes, and middle ear to maintain balance and posture, that it works with the muscles in the throat and voice box to pattern speech for both talking and singing, that it’s been found to be important in Language Development, and also in processing emotions in regards to pleasure and reward responses as well as in summoning the stresses of fear or anxiety in situations of danger and insecurity.   

 

6   Also, it seems that the Cerebellum is responsible for focusing the Attention, making it an Organ of chief importance for those who’d otherwise be scatterbrained Intellectuals, using Emotional Tension to set the agenda for what we think about, and probably also for how we would be thinking about it, but leaving the drudgery and the details for the Narrative Mind to deal with – sort of like the distinction between getting an idea for a Blog, and committing oneself to actually writing it.  Also, while I’ve been calling the Cerebellum a Second Mind, well, I think our understanding of it would be enhanced if we thought of it, in the Language of Poetry, as our Heart, the Seat of Will and Emotion, the vital Intelligent Organ that propels the Arts, Poetry, and, yes, even Sports and Athletics.     

 

7   Oh, and that mention of Sports reminded me, that during my research, I’d found that the Experts, in large part, are probably a pack of Geeks and Nerds, and therefore don’t really know how to apply the word “Voluntary”, when it comes to Sports.  Yes, I found an example where we’re told that a batter’s swing at a fast ball is a Voluntary Action.  Well, yes, taking a stance in the batters box is certainly Voluntary, but talk to any Major League Batter with a batting average of 250 or better and you’ll find that they swing on what we could call Conditioned Impulse, that is, they swing as a Reflex.  Really, they would need to swing on impulse, wouldn’t they (?), not having a heck of a lot of time to think things over, right?  

 

8  Yes, I’d read that Voluntary Reactions, sourcing from out of the Main Brain, are on a 400 millisecond clock, which means that as far as Conscious Thinking goes, we can only have one thought every two-fifths of a second, and so the inference there would be that most active Sports would require Reflex Responses, that click off on a far faster clock, or the Playing Fields would look like a bunch of Zombies staggering around, overwhelmed with all the choices that would need to be voluntarily made.  

 

9  Yeah, just look at what happens when the Geeks and the Nerds are compelled to Suit Up to play whatever Sport their Department Managers think would be good for Teamwork and Morale, that, when they do take the Field, they seem virtually paralyzed by indecision and hesitancy, and that’s because they’re trying to use their Narrative Conceptual Minds, when, really, they should be putting their Hearts into it, you know, their Cerebellums, if only they’d ever been developed for doing anything Active and Physical, besides turning the pages of Books with great poise, grace and elegance.    

 

10   Really, the best example I can think of, in regards to this issue of Neural Clock Speeds, is that a Fastball Pitch takes that same 400 milliseconds of Cerebral Clock Speed to go from Pitchers Mound to the Plate, where Voluntary Thinking would therefore still be scratching itself, standing dumb, and waiting for just that one Ment of Conscious Deliberation to decide the fate of the game, while, if the Cerebellum were the Active Agent for Decision, it’d be running on the far faster Reflexive Clock, generating multiple Ments of Perception, in that same 400 Milliseconds, to plot the course of the ball, and would give the Impulse for Swing Away the instant the Cerebellum would detect a conjunction, an overlap, between the predicted flight of the ball, and some predictable arc-plane through which the bat would be impelled to swung, where the two Constructs could be supposed to have a high probability of occupying the same place at the same time, that is, of the Bat hitting the Ball.  And, no, it’s not just Swing and Hope to Luck.  Major League Baseball has a website where they list their 20 best Fast Ball Hitters… Yeah, those would be the guys with the smartest best-conditioned Cerebellums supported by the physical strength and mechanical dexterity necessary for accelerating their bats through what must be very accurate and precise arcs.  

 

11  Also, there’s issues related to Reaction Time as a function of the Transmission Time it takes nerve impulses to travel from the Brain and down through the Spine to whatever muscle groups  are involved.  So, yes, absolute surprises can impose upon us some Reaction Time delay, and in Sports, plays that make use of sudden fakes and feigns to shake off defenders will never go out of style.  But when we are talking about Reflexive Impulse, we are not talking of reacting to surprises, no, we’re talking about how a Fully Conditioned  Cerebellum could be in effect planning ahead, being able to respond to what is only a predictable probability, if cyclic patterns or repetitions are at all involved. 

 

12  And, yes, a Dancer has Songs to work with, which are really just standardized patterns of sound.  And, yes, while it can be said that every song is different, well, if one has been a connoisseur of various genres of Music for over sixty years, then even New Songs will be predictable in that they will follow the same expected patterns that all Songs generally follow.  But, yes, if you’re just sitting down and listening, then you might think you’d have no idea how to dance out some new song, but remember that the Cerebellum is Wordless and communicates only by Volitional Impulse, so, really, for the Cerebellum to work for you, you have to get up out of your chair, jump down to the Floor, and let that Little Brain of yours make you One with the Music.   Yeah, “Just Do It” works for Dancing Shoes too.  

 

13  Also, while going over the Books and what the Experts have to say, I found there’s also the Motor Cortex which they say controls the Voluntary Muscles of the body.   Okay, now, has anybody else suddenly become confused?   What exactly is the Motor Cortex doing if we already decided that the Cerebellum is controlling movement through impulse?   Well, yes, we’ll deal with that presently, but let’s also keep in mind that just adjacent to the Motor Cortex is the Somatosensory Cortex, whose job it is to monitor sensations coming from those same muscular areas, where we can imagine the Nerves, one Sending and the other Receiving, going out almost in parallel.

 

14  Well, both of the Motor related Cortexes sit back just behind the all important Frontal Lobe, that is, the Executive Part of the Brain that is said to Plan, Organize, Initiate, and Self-Monitor all of one’s actions and responses.  Well, again, while the Main Brain’s Cerebral functions are on a much slower clock than that of the Cerebellum, there are important generalized communications taking place between the Little Cerebellum and the Motor Cortexes, but it’s not that necessary that they be all that quick, being of a Supervisory Role of setting Policy and providing feedback, which the Executive Cerebellum can acknowledge later when it’s not quite so busy doing all the Work.  

 

15   It might help us to understand this Relationship between the Motor Cortexes and the Cerebellum if we remember how the Cerebellum works with the Emotions of Pleasure for Reward, and Anxiety for Remonstrance, which would imply that the Cerebellum has some Evaluative Role to play, but Evaluation requires Conceptualizations and Comparisons, which are exactly the kind of complex Thinking that slows down the Main Brain.  So for the Cerebellum not to be slowed down, it must delegate out this kind of work to the Motor Cortexes and Frontal Lobes.   

 

16  So what I think might be happening is that the Motor Cortexes provide only a kind of First Order Planning for incipient Muscle Activities, that is the Wish or Anticipatory Visualization of some Ideal Action to Perform, while the Cerebellum does the Second Order Task of Execution – delivering the wished for product of precision impulse movements.  But, again, because Muscle Movement follows impulse and not Concept, we must wait until after the action is performed to infer what our Ideal Move should have been, only after comparing it to what actually transpired.  So, yeah, we might not be able to exactly describe our Perfect Ideals, not having much acquaintance with them, but outright blunders are easy enough to spot, and the Devil is always in the Details.

 

17   So, yes, during the Post Action Evaluative Phase, the Somatosensory Cortex, along with the Frontal Lobe Feedbacks contribute towards providing a record of the Actions or Movements that the Cerebellum can compare against the parameters of the originally envisioned Wish of the Motor Cortex, with conformance to Model evoking a sense of pleasure, while falling short of the Ideal would result in various degrees of restlessness, discomfiture or feelings of inadequacy… that is, the kind of Anxieties that many people typically feel when engaging in new forms of activity, driving them out of Interests before they’ve had time enough to ‘acquire the knack’ for them, which typically takes months, even with more than an hour per day of practice.  Yeah, my advise here is to not quit anything you think you might develop a love for until you give yourself a good six months of practice.   So, really, if a Mother can wait nine months to give birth to a Baby, well, you can wait six months to give birth to a hobby, a hobby that you already know you would like, right?     

 

18  Yes, it’s from my own experience that I’m lead to believe that the Cerebellum speaks to us in the Silent Language of Volition, and that any Emotions of Anxiety would be, or should be, secondary to the promptings of the Will to get in more Practice.  The Cerebellum, developed in the Crucible of Evolution, seeks for Perfection in Motion, always finding room for improvement, and so incremental improvements are rewarded with an Addictive Sense of Well Being, which exerts a tension to return to the Field of Activity, whereby, through Repetition, the Muscle Memory can be educated for the End of not just perfecting some prescribed set and familiar routines, but to enable the spontaneous execution of elaborate and extemporaneous actions whenever they might be called for, whether in fights for Survival, or just active displays for enhancing ones Personal Status, which, in Primitive Evolutionary Times, may have amounted to about the same thing.  

 

19  Yes, the Little Brain Cerebellum would need to hone itself through the Discipline of Practice Practice Practice, using those constant cycles of Execution and Evaluation to train the Muscle Memory up to the level of Efficient Elegance.  But if these Motor Skills were purely in the Domain of the Executive Main Brain, then the Mental Command would only need to be, “Do it Perfectly in conformance to the Idealized Concept” for it to be done Perfectly, which is often how we see it being depicted in TV and the Movies, where everything is instant and easy for the Heroes, but that isn’t at all the way we know it to be in real life.  Yes, First Order wishes, visualizations, hopes and dreams are only Acorns when we want Oak Trees, and we require Second Order Execution, which will at first seem an Ordeal, then a Campaign, and finally, after enough Practice, an Accomplishment and a Satisfaction.       

 

20  Yeah, we only have to look at the lives of committed Athletes, Artists, Musicians and Dancers, to see that there does arise a level of anxiety if the usual Practice Routines are skipped.  Really, I remember back when I was in the Army, that I would worry about missing my Violin Practices, when we’d be ordered out into the Field, but then, upon returning, I’d be beset with new ideas and  new ‘Riffs’, and all that would make me think that my Mind, what I now know to be the Cerebellum, had still been habitually occupied, at the subvolitional level, in going over all of the old practiced patterns, in order to find new combinations to try out, which would come out in a kind of deluge the moment I’d get back to my Violin.  So, yes, missing individual Practices might do very little harm, just as long as the Habit of Practice has been deeply engrained, conditioning the Cerebellum to a high level of activity that it strives to maintain, even when the usual Practice Times are unavoidably denied us.    

 

21  Also, as an illustration that there may be even more that we could expect of the Cerebellum, well, let me tell you of this one Incident, that decades ago after a long hot day at work, I was in the Right Hand of two continuous lanes of traffic riding my motorcycle, and there was another motorcycle moving up on my left and so I glanced in my mirror to take a look, when all the cars stopped in front of me.  Seeing that Motorcycle in my Mirror suddenly drop back alerted me, and so, Facing forward,  I realized the full extent of my predicament and so I hit the brakes hard but was still carrying a significant amount of speed when I hit the rear end of the pick up truck in front of me.  Then, the next thing I knew, I was on my feet running out in front of that same pickup truck, and had to arc around to get back to my totaled motorcycle, curious about what had just happened.  

 

22  Yeah, there were plenty of people who saw it all.  My motorcycle, on impact, had flipped forward tossing me up into the air, but I threw my arms up over my head, apparently trying to use their inertial energy to pull myself up for just a bit more height and hangtime, and lifting my knees up so I could clear the cab of what was fortunately one of the smaller models of pickup truck.  I landed on my feet just in front of the truck, but most of the momentum was still moving forward, and so I tucked down my helmeted head and went into a forward roll, and when the rolling slowed to the speed of a run, I spung up off the ground and ran off the rest of the speed, which is where my consciousness returned to me.

 

23   Yeah, my only injury had been from where a snapped-off Windshield Bracket had stabbed me in the left shin, which required a few stitches, and I still have the scar.   And, yeah, who knows, but maybe it was that stab to my leg that decided my Body’s Higher Mind to just pull the plug on my consciousness for a while, figuring that my Cerebellum could handle the Emergency just fine with all the Perceptual Data it was getting, and that all the Neural Resources that go into constructing Conscious Awareness would’ve best been diverted to dealing actively with the Emergency, than in just recording it, and that maybe Consciousness might have turned me into some fussy and frightened Spectator who’d get in my own way.  

 

24  But, yes, I never trained specifically for such an eventuality, but I suppose I did have the kind of Muscle Memory I would have needed for that kind of performance, because, you see, as a kid I got a lot of practice in on Diving Boards and Trampolines and such, and did more than my fair share of tumbling down steep grassy hills, and then had plenty of practice with falls doing the usual rough play and riding my bicycle throughout my childhood years.  Yeah, if I hadn’t been such a physically active kid, I might have gotten really hurt that day. Yeah, let that be a message for overly-protective Mothers, that taking a few spills might be the most important education their kids could ever get.     

 

25   So, okay, it’s time that we should  move on with our Discussion and ask ourselves what about the Ego, and then, what about our Souls?  How do they relate to our two Minds, you know, the one with its Inner Narrative Voice and Mental Concepts, and the other that moves us with just Pure Intelligent Impulsive Will.  Yes, in which Mind does our Soul reside, and which is possessed by our Ego, or is perhaps Ego and Soul just different names for the same thing?

 

26  Well, from what I remember about Zen, it’s easily inferable that the Spiritual Community HATES words and HATES concepts.  Then in all of the Martial Arts, where Machismo Violence brazenly masquerades as Spirituality, we can see how they’d LOVE the Cerebellum that automatically works to perfect Motor Function Attack, Maim and Kill Routines.   So, yeah, I used to ask myself, “if we get rid of the Ego, well, what would we have left?”  But, with what I know now, if I were to be confronted with Ego Death, what I’d wish to remain would be the Cerebellum, that Wordless Little Brain of Practiced and Perfect Motor Skills.   Yeah, it’d make me the most elegant of Automatons, with every action being the product of some Trained Conditioning or another, reverting to Creatively Intelligent Animal Instinct only in situations that aren’t part of the Training Regiment.  But, then, it’d be a Life lived in a Consciousness Black Out, and remembering Old Socrates’s Dictum, that “a Life unreflected upon is not worth living”, well, that would mean that Life without the Narrative Mind’s Ego would be, well, like a Movie without an Audience, or a YouTube Channel that nobody ever clicks on [whistle in the dark].    

 

27  Yeah, really, all of us in the Spiritual Community need to be just a bit more wary and cynical in regards to the necessity for annihilating our Egos.   Really, we need to remember that most of our Religious and Spiritual Philosophies and Practices have come from out of the Monasteries and Ashrams, where we could assume that the Social Dynamics involved would entail a lot of Leadership and Command issues.   So, yes, of course, Masters and Gurus, and all those other Managerial Types, would naturally think that their own Executive Main Brain Egos are sufficient for running the Show, and so, if means could really be found for shutting down the Frontal Cortexes of their Students, Initiates, Devotees, Soldiers or Employees, as the case may be, then that would become the Spiritual Ideal they’d be communicating to us, wouldn’t it?  Yeah, the way they say it nowadays is “There’s no i in the word Team”.  But there’s no i in the word Slave either.

 

28   But, yeah, I often think in extremes, and they tell us to  “never say never”,  and so I need to remind myself that not everybody is me, and that Human Intelligence does come in a broad range, and many of us really don’t have either the Intellectual or even the Material Capacities to manage our own Lives anyway, and so taking a Passenger Seat in some Competent Person’s or Institution’s Ride, and just Following Instructions, might actually be the best thing for many or even most of us.  And we’d know it, or perhaps feel it in terms of a deep sense of security, remembering that the Cerebellum, the Seat of Wordless Will Power, with all of its innate Survival Imperatives, would emit feeling of Anxiety and Fear if there were anything Instinctual to worry about, right?  And, yeah, as the experienced World Travelers used to tell me, that when in Strange Lands, and you don’t know what you’re doing, do whatever it is that worries you the least, and hope you finally find a situation that doesn’t worry you at all, like a Stray Cat looking for a new Home and finding one.  Yeah, we need to get in touch with our Instincts, which, again, refers us back to the Cerebellum.  

 

29  Yeah, it now makes me wonder whether it’s the Cerebellum that’s responsible for Telepathy, but it would have to be a Wordless Telepathy, expressing only Will and Intention.  Yes, that would explain why everybody talks about Body Language, but with nobody being able to catalog its vocabulary or grammar.  It would also give us a hint as to why we seem to know so much after looking into the eyes of another person or animal.   

 

30   But now, what about the Soul?  In which Mind does the Soul reside?  Was Descartes right about “I think therefore I am”, or should he have said “I Do therefore I am”?   Well, remember, that the Cerebellum was the Original Animal Brain, and those Animals had Souls, right?... well, no, not according to everybody.  … But, also, as we’ve found, we don’t need Consciousness Constructs to function,  you know, “black outs”, and that in the truly tough situations, consciousness might only get in the Way, but, then, we don’t ordinarily think of the Soul as something we can switch on and off, do we?  And, yes, we’ve been told over and over again that Consciousness is the core attribute of the Soul, but what if the Truth is actually that the Soul is composed entirely of Volition, and that Consciousness is only a kind of an Auxiliary Monitoring Circuit.   Yeah, how can the Soul be separate from the Spark of Life, you know, that basic Will to Live, which would be focused in the Organ of Will, the Cerebellum.  

 

31   But, I could be wrong, couldn’t I?   Really, looking at it the opposite way, well, don’t they say that Life is only for the Living, and so the Will would necessarily die when the Body Dies, but Souls are supposed to persist, aren’t they?   Also, the Mystic Transcendentalists go on and on about Pure Consciousness and Knowing All Things, and even in regards to their understanding of the God Consciousness, that Divine Qualities are all fixed and unchanging – a Perfection that requires no Will to Action, having come to some if not really Perfect than at least Unimprovable Cosmic Stasis.  And if it is true that feelings of Pleasure and Contentment come from the Will, well, so do our Anxieties which may have a far greater impact on some people, and so perhaps the Disciplines of Meditation are intended not so much for regulating the Mind as for suppressing and negating the Will,,,  and that Anxious Feelings and the Flow of Words, that bothers them so much, can only be strangled off by decapitating the Will that gives rise to them.  Oh, and then there is the chronic inactivity and the forever sitting still that the Meditators enjoin upon us, where we could infer that they would have their Volition and Cerebellums wither away to a passive Disability, in the same way that their Muscles and Motor Functions typically do.   

 

32  And, yes, the Cerebellum does have some direct connections to the Hypothalamus, the organ in the Mid-Brain that secretes Dopamine, the Divine Bliss Hormone, and so perhaps when the Cerebellum is relaxed or suppressed past some certain point, that the signals coming from the Cerebellum to the Hypothalamus just incidentally rail over to the extreme side of pushing some maximum Dopamine Discharge, which probably happens during the Death Process too, if the Cerebellum, being the Brain’s largest Oxygen Sink, is the first organ within the Brain’s Complex to sign off and die, you know, with the first symptoms of which being imbalance, loss of coordination and vertigo (all being impairments to the functions of the Cerebellum).  So, yes, we can guess that it’s the blinking off of the Cerebellum that culminates in all those Blissful Near Death Experiences we hear so much about. 

 

33  Oh, and yes, everybody should keep this in mind, that it would be great news for those of us who expect to die someday, that the process would be intrinsically blissful, and that the most euphoric moment of our Life may be our Last.  And then we should consider whether it’s in any way advisable to pursue the Transcendental Path if we’re already guaranteed to achieve that most prized of Transcendental Experiences, and at precisely the moment it’d be most appreciated.     

 

34  So, yes, let’s conclude, perhaps tentatively, by saying that our Individual Body Souls are defined by their Will and so reside in the Cerebellum, but that the Universal Soul, the God Consciousness, that has no Will and contemplates no Action, well, it lives, as Consciousness, a Projected Construct from our Frontal Lobes.  Yeah, we would still have the problem in regards to the Soul surviving the Death of the Body, which could only be obviated if, as I suggested in my short “Creating a Better God” series, that the Material Body is the Seed to a surviving Etheric Body, in which case, we could also expect that a Soul of Etheric Will could also persist past the Grave also.  

 

35   But, yes, while we’re still alive, we have Two Paths to choose between – either a Life of Will, manifesting in the Arts, Sports and all the various forms of Life Accomplishments, or we can choose the Life that centers on Pure Consciousness, dedicated to unattached and emotionally neutral Observation and Meditation.  The first is the Female Principle of Creation, and the second reflects the inherent laziness of a self-satisfied Patriarchy, the Transcendental Male Principle.  Most of the Spiritual Community goes with the Transcendentalists, but, we only have to refer to the Sufi Brotherhoods of Dervishes, Dancers, Musicians, Artists and Poets to see examples for a Religious Path that emphasized the Female Principle of Willing  to Live actively and creatively, and we know that all our legendary Muses have always been deemed Female, and while we might Fear the Masculine Gods of War and Strife, it is the Goddesses we Love – our Eternal Mothers, Daughters, Friends and Lovers.  

 

36  Well, that’s it everybody.  Thank you for clicking in.  Yeah, I should have a new video relatively soon, as just last night I had a breakthrough Realization in regards to my pet interest, the Collective Consciousness.   But until I can get back to you all, well, remember the Wisdom that the Ancient Brotherhoods of Dancers and Dervishes have passed down to us through the Ages, that “It’s always our next step that keeps us from falling down.”