Modular Consciousness

The usual belief about consciousness is that it is single. Here, the confirmation that the brain consists of several powerful self-conscious modules operating within a dominance hierarchy requires a paradigm shift in our thinking. Importantly, some of these ancient brain elements are not accessible to that self-conscious module who we think we are. This transformational change of context opens to us the understanding many previous mysteries of the mind, misunderstanding of which have long caused massive human suffering and death. One of these modules, has mutated within historic time from a valuable developmental arrest repair program (DARP) into a now misguided automaton related to Tolle's "Pain Body". This "xDARP" is the unwitting source of escalating marital conflicts leading to divorce, crimes of passion, and injury to children, dooming the next generation to repeat the cycle. Another self-conscious brain module operating outside of normal awareness is the social brain "Source". Competing with the antisocial, self-survival routines of the "Reptile Brain," the Source utilizes group-survival logic. Under severe circumstances, the cerebrum, site of our normal consciousness, begins to fail. At that time, one discovers their usually-hidden Source, who has been called "Holy" by those few who survive such near-death experiences. They claim their lives were irreversibly transformed through this eye-opening encounter. In fact, all the founders of the world's eight largest religions were so changed by contact with their Sources as to attract followers, thus leading to the formulation of their diverse religious doctrines. Because at that time neuroscience had yet to be discovered, a common interpretation was that their leader had been touched by some god. The details of this misinterpretation cul-du-sac have led to endless conflict and the killing of billions of sincere persons. Long before the formulation of the modern religions, the Source was also reached by long-discontinued coming-of-age initiations. In those, after two or three days of severe self-denial, the brain began to fail, causing life changing, "near-death," "out-of-body" experiences, survival of which led to welcome into the tribe as a mature adult. Some tribesmen discovered the same effect was caused by ingesting certain mushrooms. However, their Ego-death and transcendence occurred within hours, not days or years. It seems that thousands of transformed ayahuasca users in Brazil have lost their drug addictions. This appears to be due to excitotoxic pruning of cerebellar stress neurons, whose numbers were permanently increased by the trauma of childhood. The use of harmaline alone, the non-hallucinogenic component of ayahuasca, has been found to eliminate drug seeking in experimental subjects. The above are only a few of the many transformational openings made available through the context of modular consciousness.