bloodspork

The true nature of existence is not fully knowable by a limited brain that cannot think to include or map the totality of existence (and it never could, unless it was identical with the totality of existence).

Our animal brains appear as matter in 3D space (at least ordinarily), but the neuronal network itself isn't operating as structurally 3 dimensional; that is, as it calculates or conceptualizes, it is not doing so in a neural network configuration resembling cartesian planes or even fields in higher dimensional space. I don't know if occassionally it operates the network along planar or field-like configurations (that would be one hell of a hack in terms of physically mapping Cartesian thinking in the literal space of the brain), but my bet is that even if that happens, it is only momentary, probably accidental, and is quickly violated. The network is a messy graph. So thought-as-network-activity bursts into and collapses out of high dimensionality often and very fluidly.

...which is not very practical for trading a cow for magic beans, or whatever you may be up to in any given moment.

Some significant network activity appears to be dedicated to reducing complexity, and presenting that to an orchestrator of decision making, and ordinarily this reduction is what appears in consciousness/self/self-awareness. The brain's full network activity, the messy graph, more closely resembles the nature of physical reality (whatever that is), not capturing the full essence of nature, but by virtue of being of common substance and pattern with it, expressing continuity and commonality with it.

This could suggest that some deeper capabilities of the brain inherently carry a kind of wisdom that aligns more closely with the true nature of physicality.

If you consider yourself a realist, I submit that this is closer to reality: the ordinary feeling of oneself as an operator of a separate body doesn't line up all that well with reality of continuity over time and space of the physical world, where bodies and brains appear. The experience of separateness is the world of reduced multi-dimensonality, centralized into a self-concept for operational convenience. I don't deny emergence, and this is not intending to suggest that somehow you only think you're experiencing a separate self. The orientation is more like: your experience of a separate self is contrived by a mind that resolves momentary feelings and thoughts, with the aid of memory, into a steady notion of self. That steady notion of self is the thing that is fabricated. With certain practices, it is possible to notice a kind of fluidity of that fabrication.

It is also probably worth saying the following: whatever you think this experience might be like is not it. You cannot think your way into it with concepts; conceptual thinking brings the illusion back.

Reiterating a prior point, I am very sensitive to some vulnerabilities present here. The idea of “changing the operating system” of your mind/awareness, at least momentarily, to forego ordinary critical analysis and conceptual thinking opens a door to manipulation that has been repeatedly exploited thoughout history. Two points here: (1) as a practitioner of meditation aiming for this, I find that snapping back to ordinary modes of thinking is almost too automatic, and (2) this underscores the importance of refusing all religious authority.

But given safeguards in place about authority, look at how often this has come up. Some examples:
* In the opening of the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.” (Laozi) suggesting that the modeler-of-the-world-as-concepts brain that wants to describe and name cannot grasp it.
* From The Cloud of Unknowing He may well be loved, but not thought. By love He can be grasped and held, but by thought neither grasped nor held.” (Anonymous 14th c.)
* In the Ashtavakra Gita, “I am pure awareness though through ignorance I have imagined myself to have additional attributes. By continually reflecting like this, my dwelling place is in the Unimagined.” Ch2 verse 17

The ideas are fascinating, and the experience of self as continuous with the universe is a liberating modality.

“Maybe” is a good place to leave this.