What machine am I talking about? The machine is the human brain. Actually, it is the brain of all living creatures. A tree does not have a brain. An insect does. Grass not. Worms do. Flies yes. Birds yes. Mammals yes. Fish yes. Someone has called lower lifeforms one-brained beings, more developed lifeforms two-brained beings, and humans three-brained beings.
This someone was Gurdjieff, a philosopher and mystic, who was active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This simple distinction of beings into one, two, or three-brained is useful to get a sense of the difference between the various beings on this planet.
There is a ghost in all of these machines, whether one, two, or three-brained. The ghost is the mysterious experience of consciousness. Neurons fire and all of a sudden there is the flash of consciousness. It comes out of nowhere. It sparks itself into existence when there is the recognition of the organism’s existence. In humans this recognition is: “I am, I exist.”
What that recognition is in the one or two-brained beings, only they will know for sure, because only they are experiencing it. It is probably a less clear version than that of the three-brained beings, the humans.
On the surface the brain is like a machine, with observable parts. Currents can be measured. Pictures can be taken showing activity in its various sections. But where in it is that ghost located, exactly? That ghost of consciousness?
There is a mirror that reflects the experience back to the observer and that is when the ghost appears. “Ah,” it says, “that is me!” It finds itself in the experience. It finds itself caught in this feedback loop. It finds itself in a house of mirrors, only seeing itself reflected. That is a highly blissful experience. If you find that you alone exist in everything you are experiencing, wouldn’t you say that that is the greatest experience of your life? If you’d find yourself reflected in the faces of all other people? Your beauty reflected in all beautiful things in existence? You alone exist and you alone are endlessly reflected back at yourself. That is the feedback loop in which consciousness sparks itself into existence. Then there is a “you.”
What or where is that mirror? It is a mirror in which all of the expressions of life are reflected. It is the mind, the instinctual, the feeling, and the thinking mind. The three-fold mind belonging to the three-brained being, humans.
In lower lifeforms there would be the instinctual and feeling mind in two-brained beings, and the instinctual mind in one-brained beings.
This is very simple way of visualizing a matter that is quite complex. There is also the matter of the nervous system that is highly developed in humans and that helps enormously with this feedback loop. The clearer the sense perceptions – the sensing of something – the clearer the mind can reflect the world.
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