Spencer Burch

Noetics is a fascinating field of science which is trying to prove ideas that seem like they could only be found in a science-fiction novel. What if there is actually some truth to these intangible ideas? Could these findings change our world completely? The Institute of Noetic

Sciences raises three very perplexing situations and ideas: the mind-body dichotomy, the

“observer effect” and the idea of “the mind’s eye.” The mind is something that has been studied millennia before we knew anything about the brain. and Plato argued that the mind is independent of the physical brain while their contemporary, Parmenides, argues that the mind and body are one and the same. Can chemical reactions in the brain really give us the ability to remember people, objects, words, memories, etc. or is there something else going on? The

“mind’s eye” is the that refers to people being able to vividly recall a situation in which it is almost like they are actually seeing this situation through their eyes. How can simple chemical reactions recreate such an image? What about the idea that a human only uses 10% of his brain? Do we as humans have 90% more potential? Or when we die, we lose a slight amount of weight that is to be our soul leaving our body? Noetics attempts to answer these kinds of questions and many similar ones.

Noetic science (derived from the greek word , which does not have a direct translation into english but is closest in meaning to “mind”) is the study of human potential. The science tries to explain the phenomenon of and occurrences such as deja vu which are dubbed “divine intellect.” Noetic science also contains studies on nondual states of awareness

(feelings of oneness with the surroundings - i.e. meditation), consciousness, consciousness’ effect on the physical world (mostly on the quantum level), and topics pertaining to healing through consciousness.

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The Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) is the leading institute on Noetics and was co- founded in 1973 by Edgar Mitchell (an astronaut for Apollo 14) and Paul N. Temple. While

Mitchell was on his three day journey back to earth, he claims he had epiphany in which he realized that, “The presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes.” Mitchell and Temple wanted to encourage the study of human potential beyond what was already know to exist (possibly an almost divine potential). Thus the Institute of Noetic Science was created. Currently the institute is researching all of the topics listed above and publishes their findings in various scientific papers and books.

The mind is defined as the part of the brain that reasons, thinks, perceives, feels, judges, etc. The term’s (in ancient greek the term was “!"#$" (nous)) use can be traced back to Plato,

Aristotle, Buddha, and many other ancient philosophers who believed that there was a relationship between the mind and the soul. The mind is something that has always been a mystery to mankind. How are human beings able to think, recreate images, memorize, dream, love, and understand with just simple chemical reaction happening in a collection of cells that make up the brain?

From a biological perspective, the body contains many neurons which are excitable cells that transfer and process information by electrochemical signaling. Neurons are the key components in the central nervous system, the peripheral nervous system, and the brain.

Essentially, the neuron system has two main functions: to transfer and process information that is obtained by the senses and to react to information by sending signals to other parts of the body.

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The nervous system is responsible for transferring information from one place to another, but it is the brain that seems to be the biggest miracle of life (Allott 52).

The brain is composed of about 100 billion neurons, each of which can have up to 10,00 synaptic connections (specialized junctions where signals are transferred from a neuron).

Neurons communicate with each other via fibers called axons which can carry signals long distances throughout the body and cary out functions such as muscle contraction or the secretion of hormones. Although the main purpose of the brain is to create behavior that is beneficial to the owner’s health, it is also used as a tool for thinking. However, even with all of the scientific progress that has been made over the years, it is still unknown how exactly the brain works. We can understand how neurons work in extreme detail, but how these neurons cooperate and work in groups of thousands to millions is something we are sill trying to decipher (Allott 52).

The relationship between the brain and the mind is very challenging to understand from both a philosophical and scientific view. The only form evidence we have come across that hints at a strong relationship between the two, is the impact that physical changes to the brain have on the mind. For example, a brain injury or the use of psychoactive drugs has the ability not only to change the way chemical reactions happen in the brain, but also has an effect on our mind or state of being (www.greenfacts.org). However, association does not mean causation and we cannot state with certainty that there is a strong correlation between the actual matter of the brain and the mind.

The mind-body dichotomy (sometimes referred to as the mind-body problem) is one of the main issues that has been thought about and debated in for most of history. The mind-body dichotomy asks us to consider whether the mind is identical to the brain, somewhat

3 Spencer Burch related in an unknown way, or almost completely distinct. There are three major theories or schools of thought behind this issue: dualism, materialism, and idealism.

Dualism is the idea that the brain and the mind are completely independent of each other.

Socrates and Plato believed that the mind was actually part of the soul, which also determined the intelligence and wisdom of an individual. They both battled with the idea that something as complex as the mind or intelligence could simply be created by their physical body. René

Descartes also believed in the idea of dualism and was the first to state that the mind was a product of consciousness, not a product of the brain (www.iep.utm.edu).

In contrast to dualism, materialism is the idea that the only thing that actually exists is matter and that all things are made of matter. Phenomenon, including consciousness, are therefore just the result of material interactions. Materialism is more of a cut and dry scientific approach and is often criticized for its lack of “spiritualness.” This view is more easily understood by its opposition to the idea of an immaterial mind, most notably the ideas presented by Descartes (www.iep.utm.edu).

The third and final school of thought is idealism. Idealism is the philosophical theory that the “real world” is inseparable from the mind; the idea that reality is solely based on the mind or ideas. It is quite the opposite materialism in which it believes that everything physical is just a product of the mind. Therefore, the brain only exists because the mind believes it exists.

Many philosophers have sided with this idea including who said, “... if I remove the thinking subject, the whole material world must at once vanish because it is nothing but a phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of ourselves as a subject, and a manner or species of

4 Spencer Burch representation.” ( A383). Kant believed that the only thing we could

know for certain are ideas (www.utm.edu).

The mind has possibly been one of the most debated

topics since the time of Plato and Aristotle and even to this

today, we are just as unsure about it as we were back then. As

Barry Beyerstein describes in 50 Great Myths of Popular

Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about

Human Behavior, although this uncertainty has allowed for

An add for satellite TV that many logical explanations (such as dualism, materialism, and reads, “"You only use 11% of its potential. Ditto. Now idealism), it has also given birth to many myths. One of the there's a way to get the most of both." biggest myths is the idea that we as humans only use 10% of our brains with 90% untapped potential. According to an article written in a 2004 Scientific

American, there is no scientific evidence that supports this conclusion - instead there is evidence that supports the idea that we use all of our brain.

One reason this myth has endured for so long is that it has been adopted by psychics to explain psychic powers. The argument supporting this, however, is based on the logical fallacy from ignorance. The lack of information on the given topic is used in this fallacy to support this specific claim. In addition, gaining a considerable about of “brain power” would not lead to paranormal powers. For example, if we were to compare the human brain to a computer (since the basic tasks of a computer can somewhat mimic the abilities of the brain), adding more RAM

(random-access memory) and a bigger hard drive (the “memory” of a computer) will make the

5 Spencer Burch computer faster, more capable of doing hard tasks, more capable of doing multiple things at once, etc., but it will not give the computer the ability to do processes it wasn’t able to do before.

Arguments which support the idea that we use all of our brain are as follows:

1) Brain imaging tools such as PET scans (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional

magnetic resonance imaging) show that we do use all of our brain and that we do not have the

vast majority sitting dormant. We do, however, only use certain parts of the brain when

completing simple tasks such as watching television, but complex tasks that require a lot of

thought will indeed use many parts of the brain. While we may only use certain parts of the

brain at given times, over the course of a day, almost all of the brain is used (Scientific

American).

2) The myth generally states that if a portion of the human brain is removed, it can still function

as it did before since that section of the brain was not being “used.” The myth implies that the

“used” part of the brain can be found in a specific area, and that the “unused” part of the brain

is like the appendix, taking up space and essentially unnecessary. However, people who have

suffered a stroke, head trauma, or any other brain injuries are frequently severely impaired. In

fact, studies have show that any kind of damage to the brain usually leaves its victim with

some kind of functional deficit. Therefore supporting the idea that almost all of our brain is

used (Scientific American).

3) Brain tissue is metabolically expensive to grow and to run. It is hard to believe that natural

selection (the idea that individuals with “better” traits live on and pass those traits along while

the “worse” traits die off) would allow for such an organ to grow that would squander so

many resources. It is also viewed that the brain is too small (three pounds), uses too many

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resources (20 percent of body oxygen goes towards 2% of body weight), and has too much to

do for 90% of it to be dormant (Scientific American).

This myth was thought to have originated with a misquote by Albert Einstein or possibly a misinterpretation of the work done by Jean Pierre Flourens (a French physiologist who spent most of his time on brain research) in the 1800s. Jean Pierre Flourens wrote a paper on how only about 10% of the neurons in the brain are firing off at any given time which is thought to have been misinterpreted with another statement that was floating around at the time (the announcement that scientists had mapped out about 10% of the brain). Between these two ideas, the new idea arose that we only use 10% of our brains (britanica.com).

Noetics is using this myth (to an extent) to support its attempts to find human potential in the brain. They are using the idea of the “mind” and exploring its potential by “advancing the science of consciousness and human experience to serve individual and collective transformation” (Noetics homepage).

The “mind’s eye” is another miracle of the brain. The “mind’s eye” is the term given to a humans ability to recreate or make an image without using the senses - creating an

image in ones mind. It is not fully understood how the

“mind’s eye” biologically functions, but fMRI (functional

magnetic resonance imaging) studies have shown that the

V1 area of the visual cortex and the lateral geniculate

nucleus are very active during mental visualization. As

Ratey writes in A User’s Guide to the Brain:

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“The visual pathway is not a one-way street. Higher areas of the brain can also send visual input back to neurons in lower areas of the visual cortex... As humans, we have the ability to see with the mind’s eye - to have a perceptual experience in the absence of visual input. For example, PET (positron emission tomography) scans have shown that when subjects, seated in a room, imagine they are at their front door starting to walk either to the left or right, activation begins in the visual association cortex, the parietal cortex, and the prefrontal cortex - all higher cognitive processing centers the brain.”

It is thought that the “mind’s eye” is produced somewhere around the neocortex. The neocortex can be understood as an extremely sophisticated memory storage warehouse in which the data received from one’s senses is packaged and stored via the cerebral cortex. This, in turn, allows the brain to hallucinate - essentially visualizing something not being perceived via external inputs but rather an internal image. Essentially, it is believed that an error while filtering through compartmentalized data found in the cerebral cortex may lead to one being able to see, feel, hear, or experience something internally that is inconsistent with reality (Ratey).

Noetic science is experimenting with the role of consciousness in the physical world by using the “mind’s eye” to guide an event to a certain outcome or destination. This project addresses the role of consciousness in quantum mechanics and general relativity, two of the most fundamental theories in physics. In an interview with Dr. Gary Houk, I asked for a brief description on quantum mechanics and the observer effect. His response was the following:

“In quantum mechanics, physical phenomena, i.e particles interacting with force fields, can be characterized as wavefunctions rather than as a particle (with momentum and position) or as a wave (with frequency and wavelength). The wavefunction encapsulates both particle and wave characteristics of the particle in the following way. When the phenomenon propagates unperturbed and unmeasured, it persists in a wave-like state. However, when a characteristic of the phenomenon is measured, its wavefunction "collapses" into one of the possible quantized states of that measurement. Weird, but, for example, a particle can only have spin 0, 1/2, 1, 3/2, etc. When you measure its spin, it is

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observed to be one and only one of these. That's the observer effect. (by the way, you don't need an actual human observer... just interacting or hitting a wall is a measurement). At this point, the phenomenon is said to "act as a particle" in that it is localized and has well-determined properties for the most part. However, when it is unobserved and not interacting with another object, it maintains its wave-like properties and can actually have a combination of spins in varying probabilities. It's really neither 1/2 nor 1 but really both in some degree adding up to a probability of 100%. Weird stuff but experiments exist to verify this. So that's quantum mechanics in a nutshell and you can see why people love to grab it and try and prove philosophical / political / poetic / psychological / sociological points with it! It's weird and mysterious.”

The Institute of Noetic Sciences used the following experiment (two phases) to study the minds effect on the physical world: Phase I is the study on how nonphysical objects (in this case, the

“mind’s eye”) can interact with quantum objects (objects that can be found at the atomic level

(atoms, molecules, etc.) or the subatomic (electrons, protons, and even smaller objects)). The

Institute of Noetic Science used an experiment in which a monochromatic light source shot photons through a double-slit optical apparatus (called Young's double-slit experiment - for more information visit http://www.studyphysics.ca/newnotes/20/unit04_light/chp1719_light/ lesson58.htm) and recorded how intention and focus (using the “mind’s eye”) effected the outcomes of the particles. Phase II of this study looks at whether intention can have a direct effect on the speed of light traveling through optical fibers. Optical fibers are glass or plastic fibers that carry light for reasons such as telecommunications. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals can travel along them with less loss over extended distances and they are also immune to electromagnetic interference. For this study, optical fibers were a great choice because they cut down on many of the other variables that could effect outcomes. No

9 Spencer Burch information on the results of the experiment have been published yet, but it will be interesting to see what the findings are.

The mind is a very complex thing that with all the technology we have today, we still can’t truly understand. We find ourselves searching for possible explanations and theories, trying to create some kind of foundation to this unknown topic, even if they seem unbelievably far fetched. Noetics is the field of science that is trying to make something concrete out the unknown; or as the Freemasons would say, ordo ab chao.

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