Book Summary

 

The brain evolved over millions of years, literally from the bottom-up. We share the brain stem, the most primitive part of the brain, not only with mammals but also with reptiles, which is why this lower part of the brain has been called “the reptilian brain.” This is the seat of the sensory nature. The next development in the brain was the limbic system, which we share with all mammals and which rests on top of the reptilian brain. This is the seat of the emotional nature. The latest development in the brain was the neocortex, which exists only in mammals and is largest in humans, and sits above the limbic system. This is the thinking brain. Art, science, and culture are the fruits of the neocortex.

What this means is that the sense brain (brain stem) gave birth to the feeling brain (limbic system) and the latter to the intellectual brain (neocortex). Since the thinking brain springs from two very primitive brains, it interprets the world around it through the sensory and emotional perceptions of its ancestral brains. Therefore, the neocortex does not govern the limbic system and brain stem. On the contrary, the sense and emotional brain have immense power over the neocortex’s interpretation of what is good and bad.

The first six chapters of book 1, explain the psychological implications of this biological fact: blind faith in how our sense and emotions interpret the world around us. Every person who awakens into doubt by acknowledging the error of these interpretations has to seek out a new way of understanding the world. After spiritual awakening, the personality can see the importance of the great mystical teachers and philosophers in the struggle to overcome the obstacles posed by biological evolution and the ignorance that springs from it.

Mystics, and later on philosophers, intuitively created technologies of meditation that were meant to repattern some of the automatic reactions of the two primitive brains in order to liberate the neocortex from the dictatorship of the brain stem and the limbic system. They always told us we need to think and behave in accordance with love, which in essence is Spirit. Since all creation is one, we have nothing to fear. Once we realize that, we can depose the warrior-hero archetype created by fear and can replace it with the loving spiritual hero archetype.

Continuous discipline in reforming our ancestral erroneous perceptions, which have become population-wide beliefs, and their subsequent reactions, permits the neocortex to experience glimpses of the spiritual levels. Over time, this will lead to the next level of the brain’s evolution: when the pineal gland crystallizes uniting us with the Light of Spirit. This achievement has been called illumination by the old mystics of all traditions.

Beginning in the seventh chapter of book 1, our ancient history was narrated separating in each consecutive civilization the truthful ideas from the false beliefs, showing that all spiritual traditions in the world, all culture, and all science emanate from the same spiritual center, and that all our taboos spring from our shared biological evolution and our ignorant interpretations of life.

Such a study of human civilization clearly shows how the Jewish people began and, always have backed, the progressive movements that have been pushing us toward enlightenment.