It looks much more realistic to say that the brain develops or functions with the development of this self-awareness, but consciousness itself is more than the brain, the mind is more than the brain. There’s a strong force or group who think, the materialistic camp that believes that consciousness or mind is produced by the brain, so matter produces consciousness, or spirit even. Whereas equally, and in fact more convincingly, we now know that when we meditate we are actually changing the physical structure of the brain. And the way we think, and the way we use consciousness, including in meditation, has an impact upon our physical material reality. So the evidence, and this is the wisdom of the millennia of all the great spiritual traditions, the evidence now is that consciousness manifests in matter.
( Breakthrough by Laurence Freeman OSB )
