Deepak Chopra

Last week, we went and saw Deepak Chopra, who was speaking on Reinventing the Body and Resurrecting the Soul, his new book. It was a fascinating talk, and brillian to see how he weaves his medical knowledge together with quantum physics to really challenge our understanding of the body and the world around us. One thing really stuck with me... he was speaking of Wilder Penfield, a scientist in Canada who, while doing brain surgery, noticed a few things. This was under local anaesthetic, so the pateints were awake and could respond. He would stimulate the area that controlled say, arm movement. He would use an electric probe, touch the area, and the patient's arm would move upwards. The patient noticed this but said he wasn't causing the arm to move... the electrical stimulation was creating that. After several times of this, Dr. Penfield asked the patient to override the arm movement, and to move his arm across his chest. The brain area that raised the arm was stimualted, but the arm moved across the patient's chest. The big question... we think our consciousness, or our mind, is in our brain. But this experiment seems to indicate that consciousness, mind, is external to the brain... That something outside of our brain can override what the brain says... Make sense??? Quite a fascinating idea... with all sorts of implications for all sorts of things... We're reading the book right now... so more insights as they come!