Mind Beyond the Brain

We have repeatedly noted that the Magical worldview, being highly practical and results-oriented, is methodologically close to the scientific approach, and that the worldview the Magi use also serves primarily verifiable pragmatic aims. Unlike many other esoteric worldviews, Magic tries to avoid excessive speculation, accumulation of ideas, and unverifiable concepts. Even the most abstract ideas discussed within such a worldview are valuable only insofar as they serve as a basis for practical conclusions, to the extent that their consequences are verifiable and applicable.

And one such concept is the magical understanding of the mind.

What in everyday life is most often considered mind — memory, cognition, emotions, etc. — Magic, like modern neurobiology, considers a product of the body, the result of the work of the brain.

Namely, for Magic, emotional reactions can be sufficiently explained by activation of the brain’s limbic system, interoceptive self-awareness — by the insular cortex, regulation of mental and motor activity in accordance with internal goals and plans — by the prefrontal cortex, etc.

Moreover, very often what is called “mystical experience” is also linked to shifts in brain activity: thus, the experience of “presence” is associated with unusual activity of the prefrontal cortex, while the “joy” of “seeing God” may be caused by activation of parts of the temporal lobe. 

That is, often, traveling from one “mystical” experience to another, we are essentially simply shifting activity between areas of the brain, which, of course, can only very tentatively be considered valuable.

However, as a purely empirical worldview, Magic states that far from all phenomena connected with the mind originate in the brain. Although everything that happens in mind is, of course, reflected in the brain, far from all of it is explained by the brain or generated by it. The brain is, first of all, a means of the manifestation of mind, an instrument for processing information and the inner impulses of mind; it can be a source of many experiences, but it is not the source of the very energy of mind.

Accordingly, there is a big difference between training the brain and training mind, and it is very important to understand what exactly we are doing: whether we are developing new ways of responding, new reflexes, and patterns of behavior, or changing the very mode of flow of the stream of mind.

Training the brain is training manifestations: we shuffle, combine, and synthesize its behavioral patterns, reactions, and ways of processing information. However, everything that concerns the brain is limited, first, by the scale of an individual being, and second, by the time of its existence. Even if we achieve high indicators of adaptability, social success, and comfort, this does not necessarily affect the stream of mind itself, which may well remain sluggish and obscured.

We said that from the point of view of Magic, mind is a basic property of the universe, a way of the birth of reality itself, and the mental functions and manifestations familiar to us are only some of the possible properties of it. Mind is a tool of choice; one can speak of it whenever a “collapse of uncertainty” occurs, when from a totipotent medium one or another stream of reality is born. Therefore the classical definition of mind in the Hermetic myth says that it is the ability to create subject–object pairs, the ability of isolating individual properties from homogeneous potentiality. In other words, every time the One (אֵין) becomes Being (אֶהְיֶה), when the property of “being” appears — so too does the property of mind.

Thus, mind as such does not at all mean “rationality”; moreover, most manifestations of mind, from a formal point of view, are mad, irrational. However, it means the possibility of being in continuation, the capacity of reality to be real. Therefore it is said that the nature of mind is a flow, and its nature is Light (אור), describing two basic properties — continuation and “illumination” (that is, the birth of the manifest from the darkness of potentiality). And, of course, this ability needs neither the brain nor any other source of its manifestation; however, it expresses itself, builds for itself ever newer and newer, ever more and more perfect conductors and systems of support, one of which is the human brain. One could say that such mobile, acting mind is the way in which the universe knows that it is. Therefore mind always strives for new actualizations, for discovering, isolating, manifesting ever new potencies of the One.

Accordingly, training mind is the purification of its stream, the removal of obstacles on its path, and the awakening of its own potencies. Such training, first, is capable of inducing restructurings of other streams of mind, and second, has prospects for continuation and development in other bodies and forms of its manifestation. Therefore one should not pass off the ability to appear in a certain image (even before oneself) as a change in the very mode of one’s existence; one should not confuse the adaptation of neural systems with manifestations of the Foundation of their existence.

It becomes clear, then, mind itself cannot be changed or canceled; however, it is possible to make its manifestations more or less harmonious, more or less free, and the essence of all Paths of the development of mind is the harmonization of its manifestations, thus — the harmonization of being itself.

Training, upbringing of mind is the creation of conditions for its optimal manifestation, and therefore for minimal disharmony, for minimal suffering. The correction of the world is simply facilitating the free and creative manifestation of mind, whereas obscuration is, on the contrary, the construction of dead ends in its path.

And therefore Magic as a worldview does not need the concept of God-the-Creator or God-the-Judge, although it does not deny and does not contradict these ideas.

The Magus develops himself not because he “must,” not because he will be “rewarded” for it or will “improve his karma,” but simply because such is the natural course of things: it is natural for the world to strive for Enlightenment, for absolute manifestation and for Freedom, the absence of limitations for this manifestation.