BACK COVER TEXT, CONTD.

Conventional wisdom in neurobiology holds that the brain is nothing more than an extraordinarily complex biocomputer.  Neurons fire for the sole purpose of transmitting discrete bits of visual, auditory, sensory, and miscellaneous cognitive data to networks of other neurons for further computational analysis.

In maintaining such a restrictive view, science fails to account for our own subjective experience of this curiously colorful and melodious world that appears to surround us and of the “I” that perceives it—the two most conspicuous characteristics of sensorium consciousness.

Psyche’s Palace: How the Brain Generates the Light of the Soul proposes a new and radically common-sense theory that acknowledges the brain as the organ of presentation.  The principal occupation of the brain is to create this brilliant sound and light show, which is projected directly upon the convoluted surfaces of the cerebral cortex.  Consciousness emerges from within the colorful and vibrant, fine-grained quantum field produced by the patterned firings of intricate configurations of presentation neurons.

The whimsy of Nature has thrown a twist into our evolutionary story—a twist of 180°, to be precise—enough to obscure a host of clear and direct topological correlations between the broadly spherical cortical surface of the brain and the presentational sphere of reality.  The visual world manifests as a brightly colored half sphere spread out in front of our eyes, yet the inwardly curving primary visual cortex “viewscreen” is located in the occipital lobe, at the very back of the brain.  Similarly, the right half of the brain controls the left half of the body and illuminates the left half of the multisensory sphere, and vice versa.  Unbeknownst to her, Psyche rides the brain backward!

A filigree of sparkling pixels suspended in the crystal-clear fluid of the cerebral cortex forms the live and luminous theater in which the external world is continuously re-created.  For everything you see and hear and feel and think and dream must be sculpted directly from the bioluminescence of vast, oscillating networks of neurons.  The brain is simply the material substrate that holds the exuberance in place.

What if it actually is true—what the wise have always said—that YOU ARE the pure Light of consciousness that shines within?

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