Dr Bernard Brom writes:

It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when human beings were considered to be much more than bodies walking around. They were even thought to have souls and a spirit, and to survive death, that is, something survived when the body died. Today many would question this dogma around soul and spirit and would point to the fact that there does not appear to be any scientific evidence for it. They believe that anatomy and biochemistry are enough to explain all human functions. According to these scientists serotonin and neurotransmitters, brain cells and neurons have learnt to think and feel through a process called evolution and survival of the fittest. In their view feeling and thinking are expressions of cellular and chemical activity and are dependent on these processes. When these processes stop, then emotions, feeling and thought all disappear, with no human function surviving death.

My experience is that most of us have an ambiguous and paradoxical view on this subject. Some of us believe very strongly in the standard scientific viewpoint, namely that only what is measurable is real, while at the same time believing in a powerful and all-knowing God. This is indeed a strange paradox. Is it possible that the left side of our brain, which functions in a logical way, can believe in a science that is godlike and all-knowing, while the right intuitive side of the brain believes in a non-measurable all-knowing God? If the left and right brain can function separately then one can understand how it is possible for an individual to believe in the supremacy of science over experience, intuition and gut feeling, and yet at the same time believe in an all-powerful God, soul and spirit.

Of course, a thick band of nerve tissue called the corpus callosum bridges and links the two hemispheres suggesting that the two functional parts of the brain should be acting together rather than fighting each other. However, this battle does occur, for example when the logical, analytical left brain finds very good arguments for doing something that the more intuitive right brain may feel is not appropriate. Similarly a left brain-dominant person may use clever arguments to try and convince a right brain-dominant person that his or her feeling about the issue under discussion is irrelevant and not logical.

Using terms such as left and right brain suggests a very anatomical viewpoint for something that has more to do with function than anatomy; as such it is quite confusing. So while it is of interest to work out how the functions of the ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ flow through the brain and nervous system, the complexity and subtlety of mind belies a much deeper and more diffuse process at work.

Through constant observation of their experience with herbs, the ancients were able to identify the functions and uses of hundreds of herbs. Examining the herbs in a laboratory and identifying their constituent chemicals has not added major information to these older pharmacopeias. Identifying the chemicals may have very little to do with knowing how these complex products will function in the body. The ancient herbalists used analytical left brain function, but paid special attention to right brain intuitive information.

In trying to understand the difference between mind and brain using right/left brain concepts, we can consider the following: What is the experience of thinking and where does it appear to arise from?

Generally when talking about thinking one would place one’s finger over the front of the head or point it towards the head.

Where does one place one’s hand when referring to feeling?

‘I feel in my heart ....’

Here you place your hand over the chest or sternum. When talking about gut feeling you place your hand over the upper abdomen, and when sexual sensation is involved, you feel it in your genital area.

So while the brain is confined to the head, the experience of mind functions all over the body, i.e. thinking in the head, feeling in the chest area, gut feeling in the abdomen and sexual feelings in the genital area. So the mind can be said to be present all over the body. In general, men are more comfortable operating from the head using logical-analytic approaches, while women feel more comfortable operating from the heart using intuitive-feeling approaches.

Do we have any proof that brain and mind are not the same thing, apart from our experience that mind is all over? There is growing consensus that this is so and many mainstream scientists are turning the conventional viewpoint that brain and mind are the same thing upside down. Candace Pert is the most influential scientist in the field and her book

Molecules of Emotions. The Science Behind Mind-body Medicine

, is having a profound effect on the scientific community.

Pert has identified a whole range of peptides (protein-like molecules) which appear to be related to our emotions, and has found receptor sites all over the body that these molecules attach themselves to. These peptides are the molecules of emotions mentioned in the title of the book; they appear to move around causing organ response at the point where they attach themselves to receptor sites. Pert refers to these peptides as the molecules of emotions which also reflect a deeper, more subtle ‘network’ of information. This is not a question of mind over body: ‘Mind doesn’t dominate body, it becomes body – body and mind are one’.

So rather than talking of body and mind, one should be referring to body-mind. Mind is body and body is mind. It is the logical mind that has a problem here because it likes to separate and keep things apart. Think of it like this: The top and bottom of a pencil are merely two ends of a pencil. They are descriptive terms only of the same pencil but with different functions. The one is the active end and the other the storage end. Mind-body is describing the two poles of the same person. ‘the body is the actual outward manifestation, in physical space of the mind’. Thus we can understand the experience of thinking in the head, feeling in the chest and gut feeling in the abdomen.

All of this is possible because of the network-like way in which the mind-body functions. It is important to understand that in a network information transfer is all over simultaneously, thus linking all parts of the system. The whole mind-body system is in constant contact with all of itself all the time, flooding information among the cells, organs and systems. According to Candace Pert: ‘The mind as we experience it is immaterial, yet it has a physical substrate, which is both the body and the brain’.

Perhaps the best way to think of these ideas is to visualise an energy body in the shape of a human being filled with pulsating light of many colours and to see a constant flow of information around this energy body. As you watch imagine part of the light-energy body beginning to condense, forming the shape of the physical body. The physical body is the mirror image of the energy body. Now imagine that the energy body becomes invisible. For most of us the energy body with its flowing informational system is invisible. The body (and brain) can be seen, but not the mind which can be felt or known (gut feeling) .

So what happens when a person is depressed or suffers from anxiety? Is it a chemical problem to be fixed with drugs, or an informational problem occurring in the mind? And what exactly is mind if it is not chemical or anatomical? While there is some evidence that mind has electromagnetic components through which information moves at lightning speed, it is also probably true to say that just as we are more than bodies only and more than biochemistry, we may also be more than electromagnetism. There may be other subtle energies that we cannot measure yet.

Again we can turn to our own experience and recognise that something in us is able to initiate movement of the chemical-physical body. Examples include deciding to raise one’s hand. Thought occurring in the mind is converted into chemistry and the hand goes up. Or when one becomes emotional, blood pressure rises or the bowels move. Information in these examples is transferred from the mind into the physical vehicle. Have you noticed how your heart rate increases whenever you are excited or fearful?

What does it mean to open your heart to someone, to be bold-hearted, or to feel your heart sink into your shoes? This is not a thinking process (thinking mind/brain), but a feeling process and therefore relates to that part of the mind residing as it were in the chest. What happens to another person’s energy field when it comes into contact with your heart’s electromagnetic field? Is love transferable, and does love or any other emotion have an effect on our own cells? These are interesting questions, but one can only approach answers when the mind is seen as more than brain and as interpenetrating the whole body.

There is a very real possibility that our thoughts, feelings and imagination exert subtle and even deeply penetrating effects on our physical bodies, and that they influence the energy fields of others. Mae Wan Ho, a biological scientist at the Open University in England, has this to say around these ideas: ‘The visible body just happens to be where the wave function of the organism is most dense. Invisible quantum waves are spreading out from each of us and permeating into all other organisms. At the same time, each of us has the waves of every other organism entangled within our own make-up. We are participants in the creation drama that is constantly unfolding. We are constantly co-creating and re-creating ourselves and other organisms in the universe, shaping our common futures, making our dreams come true, and realizing our potentials and ideals’. (Mae Wan Ho. The entangled universe.

Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures

2000, Spring.)

With all this in mind, how does one think about Prozac and other drugs given to treat depression and other psychological illnesses. Despite the fact that they appear to benefit many people suffering from depression, a recent major review of treatment showed that there is very little difference between all the antidepressants studied and placebo. What this suggests to me is not that the drugs are not useful in certain patients, but that placebo also works. The placebo effect arises within the patient’s mind, the drug works on a chemical level, and yet they both seem to have similar results. The fact that a placebo works suggests that there is a deeper level beyond biochemistry, which may be where the roots of depression lie. It is not good enough therefore to conclude that depression is a chemical problem based on the fact that drugs work.

It is important that doctors clarify their understanding of brain versus mind. I am surprised that this issue is hardly ever debated in conventional journals and that even doctors who are believers in God and Spirit should somehow equate mind and brain only because there does not appear to be physiological evidence for the mind.

I would like to end by quoting two contradictory points of view, showing how scientists can think in opposite ways: ‘Science … says that the bases of mental illness are chemical changes in the brain and therefore physical changes, changes in the basic cells of the brain. That’s why I hold that there’s no longer any justification for the distinction that we’ve made between “mind and body” or “mental and physical illnesses”. Mental illnesses are physical illnesses. They’re related to physical changes in the brain’. (David Satcher from an interview on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, December 1999, discussing his just released first-ever surgeon general’s report on mental health.)

‘No philosopher, scientist, or psychiatrist even pretends to have any idea how brain processes could possibly produce the mysterious and ineffable experience of human consciousness. Mental illness cannot be just a chemical imbalance in the brain. Rather it is a disharmony of body, brain, mind and spirit within the whole person: an inner conflict of the soul.’ (Elio Frattaroli.

Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain

USA: Penguin books, 2001: 9.)

Dr Bernard Brom is the editor of the SA Journal of Natural Medicine. He is a member of the Complementary Medicines Committee (CMC), and a founder member of the South African Complementary Medical Association (SACMA). He is the chairman of the South African Society of integrative medicine (SASIM). Dr Brom started his practice in 1976 using a holistic approach involving natural medicines, homeopathy, herbal medicine, nutritional medicine and lifestyle management. His special interests include energy medicine, integration of the art and science of medicine, development of intuition, questioning the nature of health and healing, and a deeper understanding of the nature of Spirit in the practice of medicine