Nature takes great pains to ensure the brain remains safe. Totally immersed in a liquid shock-absorber, it lives encased inside several protective layers, from a leathery covering around the brain itself to the dome-shaped skull, a padding of hair, ingenious warning and safety devices built into the senses and a blood supply with inbuilt pressure regulators and a failsafe network of arteries. Despite all this, things can still go wrong, sometimes through accidents, or even deliberate overloading or poisoning. Read about one person's traumatic brain injury and the painful truths she only found on the long and difficult road back to normality.
Brain undergoes routine suffering in modern life
The brain of man has evolved gradually over millions of years. The perception of colour, the structure of language, and the grasp of technology are all inextricably linked to the structure of the brain itself. Evidence from the past 5,000 years shows the brain is also evolving a different sense altogether: one which reaches into other dimensions and can access knowledge not available via any other channel. The result is a gradual emergence of a new kind of individual: read these findings to see how modern society is actually at odds with evolution, and what the outcome of this disparity is likely to be.
Only in the last decade has any significant amount of progress been made in getting to grips with the inner workings of the brain. Scientists, neurologists and researchers are baffled by the astounding complexity of the "most complicated piece of matter in the universe". See images of the brain at work, and read about surprising new research which, like that which indicated a constant stream of thousands of new cells pours into the brain every day, are steadily disproving all of our previously held notions about this fantastic device.
The phenomenon of mysticism is a natural instinct drawing the race towards ever higher levels of cognition, resulting from a specialised area of the brain and causing subtle changes within the brain and nervous system. See how the ancient parables of the fountain of youth, thousand petalled lotus, garden of eden, heaven and nirvana all point to the same conclusion: within the brain itself is a device designed to give man clear sight of his own immortality and glimpse the unbelievable intelligence underlying all creation.
During the last decade there has been a convergent trend between the devout mystic and skeptical scientist. Using state of the art technological advances, it is now possible to observe the living brain, and its reactions to religious practices such as meditation. The fantastic conclusion, which without such confirmation would be unbelievable, is that the brain itself is trying to assist its own evolution, despite a contrary tendency of human nature, towards higher states of awareness in which the fundamental reality behind the universe becomes apparent, and even die-hard skeptics now admit a previously unknown and undreamed-of force must be at work.