Brain Levels and Dreams

Tony Crisp

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Highlights of this feature:

The Reptilian Brain - The Mammalian Brain - The Neo-Mammalian Brain - Conditioned Reflexes - The Reptile Brain and Territorialism - Cause and Effect in our Life - Where Did We Begin - Our Storied Self - Our Spinal and Organ Brain - Back to the Mammal - The Seventh Brain

During the last century an enormously expanded understanding of the human mind and consciousness has arisen. In other cultures much of what our own scientifically oriented culture has arrived at had already been stated. However, it is important for the western individual to gain insight from their own perspective, as much from past cultures is stated in language that is often not properly understood, and we often fail to really grasp what is being presented.

So in beginning to consider the levels of our everyday awareness and how this links with our physical brain, we can look at what anatomy, physiology and psychology have defined.

Basically the brain is separated into two halves, generally called the left and right hemispheres. But it is now understood that our brain developed its sections over the long span of evolutionary history. Because of this it has, within and also separate from the two hemispheres, a number of levels. (See: brain - left and right hemispheres.) As our present brain evolved it developed four separate 'brains' or levels, each with its own memory, motor and other functions (David J Mahoney, 1991). Each new level, as it developed, elaborated on and extended the function of the preceding levels. So, from the spinal cord the hindbrain and midbrain developed. The first level of brain that developed beyond the spinal cord has been called the Reptilian Brain. This is because what we carry within our human brain is still found in reptiles. This 'brain' often encompasses several parts of the physical brain.

The neurologist Paul MacLean gave a definition of these physiological and psychological facts of our brain in 1990. He said that these levels of the brain work like "three interconnected biological computers, [each] with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory".

Prior to MacLean's findings it was assumed that the highest level of the brain, the neocortex, dominated the other, lower levels. MacLean, and since him others (Earl K. Miller), have found this is not so. In fact Miller was recently able to demonstrate that the older brain learns fast, and it gradually 'trains' the prefrontal cortex.

Returning to MacLean's definition the base brain is the Reptilian. The next level he called the Mammalian or Monkey Brain, and the third is called the Neomammalian or Human Brain.

The Reptilian Brain

Taking the Reptilian Brain first, this is sometimes called the 'R-complex', and includes the brain stem and the cerebellum. It carries our genetically transmitted 'instinctive' behaviour such as suckling at the breast as a baby, aggressive response as with and including territorial defensiveness, the courtship and mating behaviours in reproduction. One of the best known expressions of this brain is the 'flight or fight' response in survival situations.

This brain deal with behaviour that is either innate, as described above, is learned and has become habitual, or is a conditioned response. If it is habitual we can repeat it without having to learn it or be very aware of how we do it - as with riding a bicycle or driving a car once we have mastered the skill.

The 'R' (reptilian) brain deals with those responses and actions, behaviours and attitudes, that we express without much awareness, or erupt from us because of an external stimuli. It has great strength, but also can lead to powerful anti social behaviour and psychosomatic illness. This is because it links intricately with our unconscious physical and psychological systems and with our self regulatory functions. So it throws into consciousness things that might detract us from a direction, a decisions or a relationship. This might not be rational as far as we are consciously aware, but is nearly always based on past experience that throws up a red danger signal, or a 'yes' response. There is no moral judgements at this level of our awareness. The 'R' brain simply gives rise to acts in ways it has learned that enable survival, reproduction and food gathering. In actual lizards it has a limited range of behavioural responses.

Except in stress or survival situations we usually modify and augment our internal reptilian responses. But occasionally the cerebral influence gets distracted or knocked out by drugs, such as alcohol, or exhaustion or some form of stress. Then our reptile or monkey brain can live through us again without having to hide in the obscurity of the unconscious or sleep. At such a time we might make love for the first time in our life with total passion, sensation and abandonment of guilt. A sudden extra awareness as if with sharpened senses might arise, enabling us to precisely read another person's body language and non-verbal communication. This brain also enables us to act in dangerous situations with enormous speed, strength and without having to think. MacLean says another important function of this 'R' brain is 'homing'. This means it gives us the ability to return to a base state of being after reaching out for a mate or food. Mahoney (1991) sees this as being involved in the human ability to create a sense of an external reality within the ever changing sensory and social impressions we live within. This 'brain' is also the seat of what Ivan Pavlov called conditional reflexes. (See the feature on conditioned reflexes.)

But there is a darker side too. A young man of usually gentle behaviour, whose work in his home town in USA was to spray peoples lawn with a powerful weed killer, abruptly murdered one of his clients. He had suddenly, and quite out of character, wanted to urinate while working. Instead of finding a toilet he had peed in the customer's garden. She had come out and complained to him, whereupon he killed her.

Findings show that one of the chemicals in the weed killer produces a diuretic effect making one want to urinate. It also acts on the brain, and possibly inhibits the cerebrum and cerebellum. If that is so, what the young gardener was left with was his reptilian responses without moral judgement.

The Mammalian Brain

The Neomammalian or Human Brain

The Neomammalian or Human brain, known as the neocortex, takes up 85% of the total size of the brain. Despite its size it may not be the most powerful. An American advertising company, describing the three brains in its instructions to planning advertising campaigns says, 'Our Reptilian Brain is more powerful than the Limbic (emotional) Brain, which in turn is more powerful that the Cortex (thinking) Brain. It is best to take all three brains into account when planning a marketing/branding campaign.'

Nevertheless, it is this 'brain' that is involved in much of our daily life in activities such as speaking, writing, reading and doing skilled tasks. MacLean describes this 'brain' as "the mother of invention and father of abstract thought". With it we are able to learn the complexities of language and analysis, along with self awareness and examination. It gives us the ability to reprogram old behaviour patterns to some extent, and to be personally aware of our relationship with others, rather than simply responding from old behavioural patterns.

Conditioned Reflexes

Even so we must not overrate this 'brain' and its abilities. Human beings in general are still largely moved by the old reptilian and mammalian urges, pushed into war, conflict and murder, territorialism and old mating patterns in ways that are far from rational. Most of us are urged to action by factors that are still completely or largely unconscious, arising as they do from levels of our being we know little of. Two examples of this follow.

When I left my first wife and was living with my present wife, we shared a lovely country cottage in a small hamlet. Although beautiful, the few months I lived there were an emotional hell because I was away from my children, and because of the pain of the divorce. My second wife and I then moved to be nearer my children. We had left some beehives at the previous cottage however, and so six months later we started driving back to collect them. On the way I started experiencing severe stomach pains. The suddenness of this, and the fact I couldn't think of any physical cause for the pain made me investigate my feelings. As soon as I did this it was obvious that a part of my nature which was usually unconscious, was just like my dog, responding in a conditioned reflexive way. The cottage was a place of torment - why were we going back. More to the point, how could it stop me going back? How could it deter me from facing that pain again?

When I got home from work, as I ate my lunch, my wife Barbara, told me how she had looked at a dream that morning and released a lot of resentment about me and my mother, and the damage we had done to her. I asked if it had just been noise or had she released feelings with it, as mostly what she does is without feelings. She resented my question and suddenly her face contorted with rage and she hit me in the face. Immediately I was on my feet punching her, feeling satisfaction at expression of my anger. It was all over in perhaps two or three seconds, but I had landed perhaps five or more heavy blows. Barbara was in a defensive position shouting out that I was a pig, and crying deeply. She went upstairs and I followed her and helped her release more of what was coming out. Most of it was anger she had been hitting herself with. She told me afterwards it was all to do with being left by her mother when her brother was born, and anger at her brother. But it had led me to discover more of my dangerous animal. Mike F.

In what Mike describes we see two explosions of violence emerging suddenly and without warning - very sure signs that the fight or flight response latent in the 'R' brain, or a conditioned reflex has been activated. In Barbara's case the conditioned reflex was set up by her pain and anger at the arrival of her brother, and by resentments in her relationship with Mike and his mother. But what Mike says about his own immediate and powerful violence is, 'I later came to understand that the only reason I hit Barbara was because she hit me hard on the face. Because of my eye and nose injury I seem to have developed a reflex that doesn't even reach my brain. My body simply reacts to protect my eyesight.'

This would again seem like an irrational response if we didn't know that Sultan had been attacked by a black Labrador when he was a pup. Mike's response was just the same as Sultan's. We need to remember that we are all animals, and we still carry the 'R' brain. We can however, mitigate such responses by understanding their origins and releasing or reprogramming the conditioned response.

The Reptile Brain and Territorial Fighting

When we understand that the 'R' brain is the seat of territorial and ritual behaviour, out of which arises the feeling of needing a base, a home, a territory in which you are safe, we can see another cause of aggression as individuals or a group of people feel their 'territory' is being invaded. Street gangs as well as nations go to war out of just such drives.

MacLean suggested that without a basic security, physically or emotionally, people are unlikely to extend their learning or be ready for change. This might also apply to some people who are labelled slow or dumb. The reason might be that they are too busy trying to seek emotional or physical safety to take in greater subtleties.

Because each part of the brain influences us in its own special way, and as MacLean says, 'each with its own memory, motor and other functions,' there may at times be conflicting drives at work within us. Dreams particularly illustrate these conflicts in a variety of ways. A nightmare is an example of this. The older levels of mind lying behind the Neo-Mammalian or Human ('H') brain are very active in survival drives, which in turn are part of the self-regulatory or homeostatic process keeping our body alive and psyche in balance and growing. (See: self regulation.)

A nightmare is an attempt by the 'R' and 'M' brains to release and re-evaluate old trauma that has caused conditioned reflexes that may be interfering with the efficiency and well-being connected with our present physical and social survival. Such re-evaluation occurs when we become fully aware of the original feelings and events involved in the trauma that conditioned us. In a very real sense the nightmare is a symbolic presentation of an original situation full of important information. But it has got hermetically sealed within layers of resistances or defences - basically fear, avoidance of pain, and feelings of threat - so that we cannot integrate and understand what is causing such things as depression or apparently irrational avoidances, anger, violence, panic attacks or phobias.

The conflict is between the homeostatic action that attempts the healing by re-presenting the experience, and our conscious self - what we call me or I. Actually it is more complex than that as we all have an automatic avoidal mechanism to pain or what we fear, and as the re-experiencing of the initial trauma or conditioning often involves emotional or physical pain, we unconsciously avoid such re-emergence. This is what Freud observed and called resistances or repression.

A strange loop may occur in this conflict. The self-regulatory process attempts to release into your awareness - through a dream or a waking experience - the fears and pains of the original event. But we might, as a vulnerable ego, be terribly afraid of feeling fear or emotional pain, so we repress the experience. The result - conflict. (See self regulation.)

Other dreams illustrating lesser conflicts are when we are in argument or a fight situation with other characters or animals in the dream.

So if you look at an illustration or model of our brain it is easy to see the 'R' brain as a real physical part of you. What you may miss altogether though is that it is also a very real facet or level of your total awareness.

Cause and Effect in our Experience

Being human is something like being on a moving strip that constantly transports us past scenes, landscapes and interactive experiences. Each thing we pass through is a real experience, but as we look back we see that what we have left behind fades into twilight, then darkness. Perhaps here and there in the far distance a few things still have some light on them - but not many considering what we have passed through.

In front of us the strip becomes a haze too, and so we are largely experiencing only what is here and now. However, there are some remarkable features about this moving strip. If we watch carefully we can see the law of cause and effect is at work. How we are responding to what we are passing through at the moment is conditioned by what we experienced in the past, and how we reacted and interacted with it. Also, what emerges out of the haze in front of us is also largely forming out of what we are doing, thinking, desiring at the moment, and how we are interacting with the people and world around us. That is not a totally consistent thing because we are also part of the world, and the unexpected does arise, but if we really trace its details we might still discover the flow of cause and effect.

Perhaps most misunderstood or ignored is another factor of this strip on which we ride. Where did it begin? Remember that it has just been said that the light of waking awareness can enter into dark places usually unconscious.

Where Did You Begin?

Did the trip begin when you first realised yourself as a person? Did it begin when you were born? Was your real beginning at the moment of conception?

If conception was your real beginning, remember that conception could not have happened if the two cells that united had not been alive. And where did that aliveness begin? If you really trace it back, that aliveness began at the very first moments of life on earth, and continued it journey through to the present. Yet even that is rather a limited assessment. Life only emerged because the universe existed and offers the potential for life to manifest. To say that 'I' didn't exist way back then is only a way of saying, 'I did not have personal awareness; focussed self awareness with a name.' That may be so, although some people will argue that. But if we accept that, it still doesn't mean that what supports and underlies your personal awareness did not exist till the light of your self awareness lit up. The living processes and cells that give you existed have been there for a very long time.

Over the past few weeks, slowly a deeper realisation has come regarding the results of unconscious fears of illness, or negative attitudes. These are not simply ideas or feelings as many believe, but are inextricably woven into the structure and cells of our body. Bringing them out of the body is like tearing a growth, a fungus or structure out from the fabric of our intellect, emotions, and body, that had become built into them. These may even be apparent to our imagination as dark frightening shapes or creatures that have been living in us like parasites. One man in my yoga class during the vowel sounds (chanting) said, 'As you began the sounds I had the terrifying sensation that you were calling a dark shape out of my body.' Questioning him afterwards I discovered that he had a fear of weakness regarding his heart, and the 'dark shape' was probably a representation or embodiment of that fear. The fact that the sounds seemed to call it out of him would suggest that a master of that inner world would actually be able to call these dark shapes out of us by their words and the power of their own conquest that lay behind it.

The Many Storied Self

So behind or within the physiology of our brain is the personal experience of how it expresses. In many Eastern and some traditional Western esoteric teaching about the human soul and spirit, such as in alchemy, the Pythagoreans and Rosicrucians, the inner life of a person was shown to have many levels. This could be likened to a house with seven levels, each with different characteristics. (See: levels of awareness.) Entering these various levels is a matter of focussing attention in different ways. In waking awareness for instance - the ground level of awareness - our consciousness is almost totally consumed with sensory impressions. If we turn off the flood coming in from our senses, as we do in sleep, then we experience other levels or dimensions of our totality. The following description is from a woman who was involved in a meditation group lasting several days. Gradually she penetrated levels of awareness not usually open to her.

During the weekend I had two dreams, although I was awake at the time. In the first I was going to sleep but was not unconscious, and had a very vivid experience. It was accompanied by an active feeling sense as well, so that I felt an emotional response to what I was 'dreaming' as one does in an actual dream. I was in a huge indoor aquarium. The water was very clear, but had a slight yellowish or straw colour tinge to it. I was swimming under the water looking at the many creatures. I had a sense of being within a very ancient environment. The creatures were all primordial, each functioning in its own distinct way, some of which would be dangerous to me if I related to them wrongly - i.e. if I let them contact my skin, or get into my cavities. But I was fascinated and felt a sense of wonder and privilege. As I swam I began to feel that I was actually looking within myself to the ancient processes of the blood and cells. I had a sense that we are all the time immersed in this ancient aquarium, relating to its creatures one way or another.

When we take waking awareness to these levels we can begin to interact with what we find in a healing, learning or constructive way. (See: examples One and Two under lucidity.) The following example is from a man experiencing a full immersion in quite a deep level of his inner life. As can be seen, imagery and symbolism are still potent ways in which he meets the reality of his inner life. Interesting too that at base he realises that the creative centre of his being, the level of himself that formed or created him, 'has the same face' as he.

As I was exploring the several dreams of a 'secret place underground' I was led to remember that millions of cells in my body die all the time. I intuitively knew or realised this connected with the 'secret place underground' dreams. As soon as I thought of the dream in an attempt to understand it I was inside my body. I realised I could communicate with my cells and organs - that we can all do this. It is a faculty we all have but which is usually unconscious so seen mostly in dreams. A realisation grew in me showing me that we are all Princes and Princesses. We have all been given a vast kingdom to care for and rule. It is the kingdom of our body. The billions of subjects are our cells. Our self awareness is their collective experience, but also their god, their ruler. I realised my fear of death had given my subjects a sense of there being no future for them - so why should they strive to live vitally to the end? Putting those fears on them was not a wise rulership.

With growing wonder I saw that if I were a prince, who was the king? Why had I not sworn my allegiance to the King? Then I met my creator, my King, my Heavenly Father. I loved Him/Her/It (the very foundation of myself) so intensely, I gave my being to what had created me. This was what all my subjects had been waiting for. Now they knew that on the battlefield of life, when the end came to us all, we would be drawn back to the Heavenly city and our existence honoured there in the eternal. All that was vitally ours would live on. In fact, the more cells I carried through into this merging with the creative centre of myself, the healthier body could be formed now and in future sojourns in time and space. The face of the Creator still seemed to be my own face.

The Spinal, Organ and Cellular Brain

Long before the reptilian brain formed, creatures still lived and survived because of the development of their nervous system, what we call the spinal cord. But even prior to that development, single and multicellular creatures responded to their environment, sought food, and reproduced. Their behavioural responses were very limited, but that was simply because their physiology had not developed complexity. Considering that we are ' you and I ' the surviving cells of those earliest creatures, we can see the potential innate in them is now expressed as our own complexity and enlarged behavioural repertoire.

To quote from the feature on self-regulation:

The level after level of safety factors built into our system are nothing short of incredible. For adequate functioning our blood pressure needs to be at about 110 to 120 (i.e. it displaces 110 millimeters of mercury). It can drop to 70-80 before a critical situation arises in which tissue may die because blood is not reaching it. If we lose a lot of blood, even as much as 30 or 40 percent, the self-regulatory process maintains adequate blood pressure by constricting the blood vessels. This action is controlled by a part of the brain. If that brain area is injured or destroyed, other centres take control. If they arc eliminated, ganglia in the sympathetic nervous system direct the action. If they too are eliminated the walls of the arteries and veins themselves regulate their own activity.

As is so clearly expressed in that description, control centres are capable of acting at every level of our being, not just the brain or nervous system. In fact, what is slowly coming to be realised, but has been said already by people who have explored their inner life, each cell is an intelligent being. But its intelligence and agency only attain self awareness if we are able to touch it by entering its world with focussed self awareness.

When we are able to do that very fully, effects on sick areas of our body and mind are produced that are considered miraculous or impossible, or are perhaps labelled as 'spontaneous remission', by the medical fraternity. We are able to tap a vast source of information, transcend the usual limits of time and space, and discover our own roots in the universe itself. For more information on this see Michael Talbot's book The Holographic Universe, Hadad the Rogue Yogi, and Edgar Cayce.

However, the intelligence in the cells might go beyond simple ability to reproduce and survive. In a recent (November 22nd 2006 BBC 4 broadcast), Ian and Lynda Gammons explained how, after Lynda had donated one of her kidneys to save her husbands life, he underwent very marked personality changes. In fact, after being married for thirty years and developing habits of living together such as Ian hating shopping, gardening and cooking, he suddenly showed insight into household needs, enjoyed shopping and gardening, and now does all the family cooking. The transplant took place in October 2005, and Ian says the apparent opening in him of a sharing Lynda's inner disposition is still developing. In fact they have begun to have exactly the same dreams.

Dr Paul Pearsall, Clinical Professor at the University of Hawaii, after his own hip cancer and what it revealed to him about the depths of his body, went on to study the experiences of transplants and explains, in his book The Heart's Code, about even more extraordinary cases of cellular memory.

Recently - June 2007 - Canadian biologists discovered that plants have "complex social behaviors such as altruism towards relatives." This was revealed by watching how plants in the same 'family' "do not increase their root growth while sharing a pot with siblings or family. But if they share a pot with a stranger, they "get competitive and start growing more roots, which allows them to grab water and mineral nutrients before their neighbors get them." The study appears in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters. It shows yet again that consciousness is not unique to mammals. The whole universe demonstrates sentience at various levels of complexity.

So, the more fully you move your self awareness into the realm of your organs, cells, and beyond, the wider your horizons of awareness become. Perhaps this is a simplistic way of looking at it, but considering that we have all developed from the same simple cells, we are all related and 'know' each other at the cellular level. However, some thinkers in quantum physics say that it goes beyond that. Their statement is that the fundamental material or energy of the universe is sentient and holds all experience.

Touching it means we share that huge awareness and timelessness that is the foundation of our own existence.

Back to the Mammalian Brain

As already said, each of the higher 'brains' extends and modifies the preceding level. So the 'M' brain extends the basic responses of the ?R' brain, and modifies it by controlling aggression and informing the flight or fight, mating, and food gathering responses. It does this through its much enhanced and extended emotional range, along with its ability to have insight into social and interpersonal situations.

The major areas the 'M' brain deals with can be observed in the behaviour of mammals when compared to reptiles. Although the caring for young is seen in some measure in reptiles - the crocodile for instance - it becomes much more marked in warm blooded creatures, and especially in mammals. Mammals have also markedly developed ways of working as groups, special cooperation in mating, social awareness and a hierarchy of roles. In particular they have an expanded range of what we call emotions. The word emotion comes from the Latin 'e movere' meaning to move, and in the case of emotions means to be moved, to have our feelings, and therefore our responses changed. Such 'moving' experiences are very important in connecting us with another person, such as our mate or children. Without emotions life often feels empty or meaningless. If people have been injured in regard to experiencing their 'feelings' they often find it difficult to make decisions or to relate to people other than in practical ways or even brutal ways. They lack empathy. Whereas the 'R' brain deals in survival, self-defense and counter-attack responses such as feeding, fighting, fleeing and reproduction, and is moved, but not by subtle feelings, only the drive to survive and the fear of death, the 'M'' brain is part of the drive that has led mammals to develop breasts. They give if themselves to their young for long periods; unlike the reptiles that are on their own when they hatch from the egg. The mammal male and female protect their young over what is for their life span a long period of time. Mammals teach their young strategies of survival and social interaction. In mammals other than humans they do this solely through the young learning by example. This occurs in human young as well, but is supplemented by verbal and other forms of education.

Another aspect of the 'M' brain is its tendency to defend territory, fight for or display for a mate. Together these tendencies led to the formation of what we call family. It is the 'M' or primate brain and its tendencies that lies behind what we see in human society as strategy or planning, group action, hierarchy, cooperation, religious feelings - i.e. recognition of fellowship and common origins - and the ability to sympathise or empathise with others. It is this 'feeling' level of our experience that is so often hurt and made ill in human society and the way of life developed in industrial societies. This is because in the reptile there was no childhood as we know it. There was no innate and dominating need to be cared for and 'loved' in a very specific way. When these needs are not fulfilled in us during our rearing, important aspects of our potential do not develop. Many men and women in their forties and beyond admit that they do not know how to love, or what love is. It has been so damaged or unfulfilled in them in infancy that it never emerged in their experience. Such undeveloped 'mammals' can be very aggressive, anti society, and murderous. They lack the finer feelings that enable sympathy and empathy. A dream partly showing this is below.

Example: I dreamt a small animal was clinging to my chest. It gave me the strong feeling of its animal nature, and was like a small bulging eyed monkey or lemur. As it clung it had one of my hands held firmly in its mouth using it as a teat. Its teeth were slightly painful. I knew it did this on account of being frightened, and I, with others, was taking it back to where it had escaped from.

The dream clearly shows the vulnerable 'mammalian' feelings of the dreamer, and how this part of him is frightened and lost in the human world. The next dream illustrates another aspect of how we deal with these different levels in us of the reptile and the primate.

Example: I was in a room, or storeroom, full of chimpanzees. I had to leave them. Some of them opened the door. It was not locked, and I didn't lock it, but I went back in and asked them not to open the door, as there was a busy road nearby, and they might get run over. As I spoke, one was standing with me who was now almost as tall as myself. Its features had become almost human, female. She seemed very sad, perhaps because she was only half human. I felt deep links of sympathy.

The person whose dream this was explored their feelings connected with the dream and explained their conclusions as follows.

When I was in the room with the chimpanzees I was feeling that I was dealing with a part of me that was not as integrated with the modern world as 'I' am. I feel this part of me as very loving, but it has a different relationship with things, and it needs to be protected from certain things, as suggested by the warning about the road. So the chimpanzees are powers or abilities I have, but they are not yet integrated fully into my everyday life. But being in the room together means we are now being brought together, being integrated. The room is a gathering point, in a journey toward being made human. I mean by this that although people call themselves human, we are really only half formed. We have not yet integrated these older parts of ourselves and so are rather disintegrated and liable to breakdown. I guess this can be seen in modern society where so many people need medication or other aids to live a functioning life. I experience the female chimpanzee as a special feeling of love that flows into my life; something from beyond myself that transforms me and helps me to become whole.

The dream shows how the world of today, the consumer society, the industrial world, is harmful to that natural and loving life in us. We need to be aware that we are living in an environment that is dangerous, just as dangerous as a jungle with predators. If it were not so the countless people who break down and become mentally ill would not occur.

A man who dreamt of having to deal with a dead 'ape man' who gradually came to life, comments on his dream as follows.

The monkey man feels like my own earthly, primitive, caveman strength. The sexuality, the total life of my body. As a 'civilized' man I am frightened and somewhat ashamed of it. It was dead and is coming to life. The doctor in the dream I can experience as my good, strong, positive emotions that have been so apparent lately, and are having a healing influence on the way I relate to the ape man. In fact that part of me is coming to life again. In the past I have seen myself as a fairly pathetic, or ordinary human animal. I know that I am one of the mass of human beings - half animal, half man. But I have an urge to grow, to know myself more fully.

The ape man me is the part that feels the anxiety and agony of the human condition - that is able to look at and get to know other people more deeply through knowing in myself how human I am. Maybe that's what love is?

The 'M' brain also has a form of thinking and language. But it's thinking is largely in what we see as dreams or fantasy, the exploring of 'ideas' through imagination, in relationships or dramatic events.

But one form of behaviour that is unique to mammals is play. This joyfulness and abandonment is seen in all manner of mammals. However, in both mammals and humans the 'R' brain is still very active and ready to strike out aggressively at others. But when extended self-awareness really wakes up and feels secure, it becomes joyfulness, and is transformed into the energy of wider awareness. See: kundalini.

When we enter the 'M' brain with awareness we experience a greatly increased perception of what is happening in relationships, is social situations, and in children. Here is a description of what this is like.

While working in the kitchen of a hotel on the dishwasher, I was standing cleaning a worktop. About five or so metres in front of me the elderly boss of the hotel was talking to one of the waitresses. It seemed to be just light stuff about how many customers were about this season. Then I happened to look up at them and suddenly the whole way I saw them changed. Every tiny movement they made was like a massive flow of understanding pouring into me. Everything was changed. I could 'see' that they were 'talking' to each other through tiny shifts in their body and face. But they were probably not aware of this, as the signals were to a part of them that understood but was perhaps not conscious, only felt. And as I watched I could 'see' a column of energy connecting them at the solar plexus, which I understood showed they had a sexual time together. Seeing this I realised that when we have sex with someone we form this energy connection with them and we flow into each other in some way. Later I asked F. is she had at some time had sex with the boss. She admitted she had.

Our forebears, and especially mammals, probably saw or see in this way all the time. Without language they 'read' each other's body language and inner disposition. They needed to in order to survive. They also understand the world, as the above dreamer suggests, through what is 'felt'.

The Seventh Brain

Life often moves beyond what it has expressed as and through. We see this in the brain the lizard developed as it moved from being just a spinal creature. We see it in the mammals as they moved to a fuller range of responses and behaviours beyond the reptile. In humans their development of language and cooperation, creativity and invention is seen in their larger and more complex brain. But in many humans in the past and today, there is an expression and speculation about a fourth brain.

However, what Chuck says is from a rather Quietist point of view. For balance it needs to be said that nowhere in the universe is there simply one polarity. So emptiness is balanced with fullness. Stillness is balanced with activity. The difficulty here is that the division of activity between the right and left brain hemispheres cannot easily be divided from the type of awareness mentioned above. The right brain has a global awareness less limited by the senses, and for many people the way to open the door to these higher 'brain' activities is to be open to everything they hold within themselves in a non attached way. See Brain Hemispheres.

Carl Jung said that the key to this change in awareness comes through action in non-action. He goes on to say it arises from letting things happen within ones life; not controlling all the time, and not editing what is thought and felt. Aiming to be still would be a form of massive editing, unless it arose spontaneously from non-interference.

Dinah Day, who I was taught Buddhist Vipassana meditation by, spoke of this condition as non repressive, non expressive. For myself I have found that there are depths and heights in myself I could never reach if I repressed spontaneous activity.

However, there is an important point here in the play between the two approaches. It is that if you stop editing, and let things happen as Jung suggests, material that had been repressed and unconscious starts to emerge. If you are still totally identified with your emotions, your body sensations, your sexual urges and thoughts, then you could be tossed around like a rag doll by a dog.

Smeagol In Lord of the Rings is a personification of attachment

Non identification, the still awareness within the midst of thoughts, emotions and urges, is vital. Only in that way can you meet and transform the backlog of material and life experience that has been pushed into unconsciousness. Only involved detachment can bring that about. Exercises in self observation or Vipassana meditation are excellent training to develop that condition. Exploring the dramas and emotions of your dreams is also a wonderful training ground. So, coming back to the experience of this new potential in humans, it involves a direct experience of what you are looking at, sometimes even a massive overall view of things. Perhaps it can be explained by saying that mostly we consider things from what we feel, who we are at this time in our life, its needs, fears, demands and difficulties or opportunities. But, if you imagine that you are somehow enlarged so you not only know your life here and now, but at the same time you experience all the years of your life at once. This massive awareness leads to amazing insights from the very depths of you into who you are, what you are and what you are actively pursuing. But the 'fourth brain' takes us beyond even that, and to our personal experience is added everything else.

On the Supraconsciousness site it describes such an awareness as, 'One has the perception that the universe is a totally integrated and unified whole and that one is a part of it. A "cosmic consciousness" is experienced so that the whole cosmos is perceived as a unity and one's own place in this whole is simultaneously understood. Self-boundaries are lost as one becomes integrated with the rest of existence; however, self-identity and individual awareness persist.

There are many dimensions or levels that this fourth mind opens us to. There is such an enormous literature on this that it is difficult to summarise it, but basically we are looking at the emergence of a new type of woman and man.

In these further spaces of the mind people have found access to the motivations, fears and responses that lie behind their waking success or failure. They have a gateway to the roots of creativity and innovation that can enrich their everyday life. The processes of the body, usually beyond control, can be influenced to improve health.

To finish, Eileen Garret, in her book My Life, says, ''In each phase of evolution all changes in states of consciousness become enveloped in an external form appropriate to its degree of being. Higher states would inevitably evolve corresponding forms of being. And this I know to be true from my own personal experience of seeing and living in supernormal areas'.

See: brain-left right hemispheres; reptiles; the fundamental process.

Useful questions are:

In what ways can I recognise the action of my reptilian and mammalian brains in my daily life?

Am I denying or mishandling the normal and natural drives of these parts of me?

Where in my dreams can I see the contact with and influence of these different brains?

Have there been times in my life when I felt the fourth brain functioning?

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