The Brain’s Genius

The desire to alter consciousness periodically is an innate normal drive analogous to hunger or the sex drive.

Dr. Andrew Weil wrote those words. We all innately agree with him, but some of us reject those thoughts because of our belief structure. Weil is a respected American physician and author. He is best known for establishing the field of integrative medicine. He is Program Director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, and also founded Weil Lifestyles LLC.

Dr. Weil instigates some interesting thoughts about our desire to medicate our focused consciousness. Our inner consciousness is constantly altering itself by manifesting physical experiences. Our brains are event-forming psycho-mechanisms. The brain’s genius originates in the mind so it can be called a biophysical counterpart of the brain. The brain is never satisfied with one version of an experience so it uses imagination to shape other versions of the same events. The brain forms these other events with help from our inner senses.

As children, we use all our senses in play-dreams. Children’s dreams are much more intense than adult dreams because the brain is practicing event-forming activities. These events are plastic to a child. They are not restricted by linear time. Focusing our senses in time and space is an acquired art.

When we dream as adults, our imagination is still free to play and form events. Imagination helps juggle certain probabilities within different niches of probabilities. We constantly alter our consciousness in dreams in order to take on a variety of physical roles. Our unconscious or subjective environment is our playground as well as our school. It gives us the ability to act out our imagined events objectively once we subjectively fine-tune them in some way. Our imagination allows us to create tools and invent physical things that enhance our experiences. So our imagination is our planning tool for the future, and a play tool in the present. It helps alter consciousness naturally.

Imagination operates outside of our physical senses so it is not tied to practicalities. If it were tied to pragmatic principles there would be no new inventions. Imagination translates information that is available in other areas of the mind.

The desire to expand and alter consciousness is a mind function. Our physical consciousness is constantly changing so experimentation becomes another method of altering our consciousness. These experiments are seeded in our imagination, and some of them can help answer questions about our multiplicity when they are used properly.