Brain / Mind / Soul
What consciousness is and how it works.
In this article I'm basically going to give an overview of what consciousness is and how it works. Knowing well that words and sentences are a lossy compression of thoughts... So bare with me!
I've often heard people talking about the mind and the soul as different things and this has been annoying to me; because how many "parts" do we actually consist of then? And which one is "me"?
Here is my take on this!
Brain
The brain (and the nervous system) is the primitive "wetware" (biological computer) which functions as the control center of the body, handling the "low level control" such as balance, muscle memory, breathing, reflexes, the digestive system, hormone releases and much more (see "autonomic nervous system").
In an emergency it can even take over the control of the body (in an effort to maximize the chance of survival).
Soul
The soul is what connects to the brain to have a "higher level control" over the body (basically the "user input" which tells it what to do).
Which can be compared to a human controlling a car; where the human has a high level control (using the wheel and the pedals), but the car's low level control systems handle things like the anti-lock braking system and the traction control system.
The soul is connected in such a way where it receives sensory input through the brain to be fully immersed in this "game" that we play as "physical beings". Adding to the immersion is also a system where memories are (mostly) handled by the brain; giving us a kind of amnesia from the memories which we have from before the body.
Hence we're easily fooled into believing that we ARE the brain and that the brain is the source of our consciousness.
Mind / Ego
The mind is the perspective from inside of your body. It's what you perceive as your "self" or your "consciousness" or the mind who is in control!
It's the part of your soul which has an amnesia from its time outside of the body. The part of your soul which gets "crumbled" here on earth (the mind is where all your imperfections reside)!
It's also what we refer to as "the lower self" (where the higher self is the soul without amnesia).
And yes, the mind can go crazy... Because life as a physical being is the craziest thing there is!
And most of us are tricked into thinking that we ARE our mind, that this mind is all there is to us! That it is our "true self", but it is not.
The mind is mostly just a "role" that we explore in this "role playing game"!
Sub-consciousness
In my opinion the phenomena of "subconsciousness" is when the mind is influenced by the "primitive brain" or the higher self. We call it sub-consciousness because it is ideas, thoughts or feelings which we don't feel originated from our active mind (as in we're not sure where they came from).
So what exactly IS the soul / higher self?
Basically the soul is just a perspective which the "eternal consciousness" is experiencing from.
Where the "eternal consciousness" is all there is (it's the only thing that is and has ever been in existence) and it's a single consciousness (not multiple). But since it can experience from multiple perspectives at once (in parallel) it can achieve the illusion of separateness (you).
And there is another name for this "eternal consciousness" which is "God". But sadly most religions misunderstand what God is and spreads a lot of false information about God. Where the biggest lie is that God is somehow separate from you (which is a terrible lie to spread).
And what is God actually experiencing?
It's experiencing its own thoughts, basically everything that is is just a fantasy in the mind of God! Something which we can't comprehend because our minds are limited. But the mind of God has no limits!
Limits are basically just another aspect of God's fantasy (meaning they're artificial). Yet, we humans think that limits are logical; because it's how we have been conditioned in this "physical construct" which is a construct where limits play an essential role!
Basically our souls which can be seen as "eternal beings without limits" go to this physical construct to experience limits and what arises from having them.
In essence souls are the tentacles of God which he (it) experiences from.
But each soul is different?
Yeah, the fascinating thing about your higher self is that it also maintains a kind of individuality. In other words it's a perspective with its own unique "context"; context as in its own set of memories from the lives it has lived, in addition to an amnesia from the lives lived by other souls (the rest of the "God consciousness").
This allows each soul to explore different things and to develop their own "uniqueness" from their experiences and from what they have learned.
You've now probably noticed how I use the word "perspective" a lot when I talk about "souls". This is because God is experiencing from multiple perspectives at once, and a "soul" is basically just that.
Your soul or higher self is just a certain perspective higher up than your lower self; meaning it can see, feel and experience everything that your lower self is experiencing.
But not just THIS lower self; also from all your other lower selves (your other lives / incarnations). And this might be hard to grasp; but you can actually live those other lives in parallel with this one!
But down here from your "mind perspective" you can't see or feel anything from your other such perspectives. Meaning you could meet another person who actually shares your higher self and you wouldn't even have any clue about it...
But when you die you would of course be able to remember both lives; because your perspective will then move / merge back to the higher one!
The highest self is God!
And yet another fascinating thing about this is that even your higher self has a higher self, up all the way until the "God perspective" is reached! The God perspective which can see and experience from EVERY other perspective at once (no amnesia)!
Basically we have a tree-like structure of branched perspectives where God is the trunk!
Endnotes
It's important to understand that when you die (move up to a higher perspective or merge to a higher perspective) you don't lose any of your individuality or any part of yourself; instead you'll just remember that you are so much more than this part!
It's also important to understand that there is no "static" number of souls waiting around for a body to live in. Instead that these "soul perspectives" are branches that grow out when needed and merge back into a higher perspective when not needed.
That there is just one consciousness! You / God!
Update (from the day after I wrote this):
I just became aware that Jeff Street has written a very similar article explaining lots of the same concepts (using a surprisingly similar language).
This is quite fascinating because we're not inspired by each other (we independently came to these conclusions)!
So no, don't just "take my word for it"; we're many people who have awakened to this reality now and we're all reaching (mostly) the same conclusions!
Here is his YouTube channel if anyone wants to research his work further.