Could the Spiritual Theory explain why a man can live and be conscious without 90% of his brain?
In a simple way we can say that in regard to the problem of consciousness there are two school of thoughts, one school that describe consciousness as the result of brain activity and the other school that describes consciousness as a physical expression of the spiritual being –the real source of consciousness- which exists beyond the limits of matter.
Proving the existence of the spirit is a complex and difficult task due to the difficulties to adjust the spiritual experimentation to the scientific method, but besides the increasing amount of evidence relating brain function to consciousness expressions -from time to time some medical cases are emerging- challenging the idea of a consciousness as a result of brain activity. This is one of those cases.
If consciousness is the result of brain activity then any damage to the brain will affect the way consciousness arises and expresses. And that has been roughly the case so far, except for the case reported in the link at the end of this article.
The article describes the case of a French man who at his forties showed a head scan where almost 90% of the brain was lost. However, the man was normal physically and mentally, married with two children, deeply challenging all theories about consciousness. How can a person with such level of brain destruction still retain any level of awareness?
Axel Cleeremans, a cognitive psychologist from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium came up with a hypothesis named “Radical Plasticity Thesis” which describes consciousness as “the brain’s non-conceptual theory about itself, gained through experience”; He said that in order to be aware, it is necessary not simply to know information, but to know that one knows information. This new idea to explain consciousness explains that the French man is normal with just 10% of his brain because that tiny portion of neurons can still generate a theory about themselves producing a state of consciousness.
But if that was the case then why are other people with less brain damage losing consciousness? Or why are other primates with healthy brains holding more neurons than this man not as conscious as humans?
We can’t disprove the brain theory of consciousness but we know that the spiritual theory has an explanation for this case. Let’s start with a short description of how the spiritual theory describes consciousness.
According with the Spiritual Theory (ST) the real conscious and intelligent being expressed in every person is the spirit, a concrete being whose nature and existence is of spiritual origin, hence cannot be detected with physical means.
The spirit joins matter (a body) when the body starts forming as an early embryo and specifically when the brain start to develop. Those few brain cells hold the key for the attraction and retention (incarnation) of the spiritual being: the specific pool of genes that defines a human being. It is due to that specific type and combination of genes what creates the conditions for a spirit of the human nature to be attracted and incarnated.
In other words, incarnation can occur with just a few groups of cells which sets a starting point for the process named in the ST as the incarnation/disincarnation threshold. From that point, further development of the brain just increases the ties between the spirit and the brain setting the necessary connections to control the body and live a physical experience.
The incarnation process however has consequences for the spirit through two phenomena known as “forgetting of the past and state of confusion”. The fist phenomena entails a complete blockage of the spirit’s past memories and the second one allows the spirit to be conscious of himself only when it is awake in the body, otherwise the spirit is submerged in a state of confusion similar to that one we experience when dreaming.
Since the spirit’s intelligence needs memories of experiences to express and gain consciousness, the brain provides the spirit with a temporal source of memories but just related with his physical experience. That memories reside in the spiritual particles that constitutes the brain cells “soul”, hence it also exist at the spiritual level. That is called “mental memory”.
With all these elements, the real intelligent and conscious being –the spirit- awakes to the physical existence gaining more and more awareness of himself as more experiences are accumulated and better connections are developed in his brain. It is important to emphasized that during the physical life the incarnated spirit has all his spiritual memories (including his own memories of the physical life) blocked as they form, but still can use the memories associated to his mental memory in the brain, which is not as detailed and limitless as the spiritual one.
The being, the intelligent and conscious being is the spirit, and the brain is just the interface that connects the spirit with its body. The union of the spirit and the body happens early during the embryonic stage thanks to the specific spiritual signals created by the pool of genes that define us as humans, hence the reason why only human beings or creatures with such level of encephalization quotient can have a spirit incarnated and no others. And along the development process the spirit develop many connections with the brain in order to have a normal physical life.
If by any reason, the brain starts to experience damage, the brain in response to the spirit needs re-do its connections in order to provide the spirit with the connections needed for a normal life. Obviously this is not always achieved and in many cases multiple deficiencies can originate in the persons brain preventing the spirit from having a decent communication with his body and the physical world (hence the mental disabilities). But in this case we can hypothesize based in the ST that an extraordinary reconstruction of the brain connection happened to the point that the incarnated spirit could learn, acquired experiences, and express his intelligence and consciousness through his body. This is an extraordinary case similar to those cases related with kids having verifiable memories of a past life, genius by accident, xenoglossy after brain damage, etc.
http://www.sciencealert.com/a-man-who-lives-without-90-of-his-brain-is-challenging-our-understanding-of-consciousness