You Can Be a Brain Surgeon

Men stare into space with their telescopes and search the invisible biology of life with their microscopes.  They see the magnificence of creation and then attribute it to evolution's time, chance, and need.  Man, who is made in the image, likeness, and glory of God, is reduced to a slimy life-form that crawls out of some unknown kind of primordial soup. Surely, the Scriptures define this carnal psychosis in Romans 1:21-23:

21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

An obvious and ultimate demonstration of the 180 Principle (exact opposites) is displayed here.  Man, who is made in the very image and glory of God (I Corinthians 11:7), has been reduced in the minds of the foolish to a creeping thing. 

Man was originally made to communicate in harmony with his Creator but unbelief and disobedience ushered in the law of sin and death—and the life connection was broken.  God sent His only begotten Son to redeem us from our sins and, through the miracle of the born-again experience, reestablish the life—even eternal life—connection.  Have you been born again?  You did not evolve from some primordial soup.  You did not evolve from the monkey.  You were made in the very image of God.  Are you ready to cast off the bondage and emptiness of this life?  Will today be the best day of your life—with the promise of tomorrow being better?  It’s decision time.  It takes just one click.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Romans 12:2:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

GOD SAID, Ephesians 4:22-24:

22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

GOD SAID, Colossians 3:9-10:

9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;

10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:

GOD SAID, II Corinthians 10:3-5:

3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:

4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)

5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

MAN SAID: The human brain is the most magnificent structure in the universe.  Isn’t it exciting how it just evolved out of nothing? 

Now THE RECORD: God’s Word is always perfect science.  Those who embrace it in childlike faith are never disappointed.  When man begins to understand a profound principle, he will discover that God is already there.  When originally spoken, a Biblical statement will often seem bizarre and defy carnal sensibility, but after a closer look, it may not be so bizarre after all.  God’s Word speaks of the judgment of God, soon to strike the earth, in Revelation 6:12-14:

12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

13  And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

Blood moons and falling stars can hold court in today’s realm of reason, but the heavens being rolled back like a scroll?  Scientists now theorize that space can be torn.

GodSaidManSaid has published numerous features on the brain and its plasticity as well as techniques to harness its power and the ability to literally rewire it.  A recently-published book by Dr. Caroline Leaf, titled Switch On Your Brain, adds a new and powerful dimension to the narrative.  But first, review a few foundational excerpts from previous GodSaidManSaid features:

• From the GodSaidManSaid feature “Changing Your Brain:”

Not only is the human brain equipped with Godlike—and therefore ever-expanding—capabilities, but He created us to interact with Him. 

New research published in 2009 in Newberg and Waldman’s book, How God Changes Your Brain, sheds additional light on the subject of neuroplasticity.  The following excerpts are from Newberg and Waldman’s book:

Contemplating God will change your brain, but I want to point out that meditating on other grand themes will also change your brain.  If you contemplate the Big Bang, or immerse yourself in the study of evolution—or choose to play a musical instrument, for that matter—you’ll change the neural circuitry in ways that enhance your cognitive health.  But religious and spiritual contemplation changes your brain in a profoundly different way because it strengthens a unique neural circuit that specifically enhances social awareness and empathy while subduing destructive feelings and emotions.  This is precisely the kind of neural change we need to make if we want to solve the conflicts that currently afflict our world.  And the underlying mechanism that allows these changes to occur relates to a unique quality known as neuroplasticity: the ability of the human brain to structurally rearrange itself in response to a wide variety of positive and negative events.

If we combine all of the research on neuroplasticity, we must conclude that neurons do not have fixed properties or positions.  Instead, they are changing all the time, triggered by competition, environmental changes, and education. 

So what does neuroplasticity have to do with God? Everything—for if you contemplate something as complex or mysterious as God, you’re going to have incredible bursts of neural activity firing in different parts of your brain.  New dendrites will rapidly grow and old associations will disconnect as new, imaginative perspectives emerge.  [End of quote]

• From the GodSaidManSaid feature “Let’s Change Our Brains:”

In the November 2013 issue of Discover magazine, a six-page feature was published under the heading of “In Defense of Free Will,” with the sub-head, “A treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder suggests we can use the power of our thoughts to rewire our brains and direct our fate.”  Several paragraphs follow:

Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz got a phone call at 3 p.m., a script before 5 p.m., and the next afternoon, he was there, sitting with Leonardo DiCaprio, exploring the intricacies of one of the most debilitating mental illnesses in medicine. 

DiCaprio was tackling the role of Howard Hughes in The Aviator, a part requiring him to arc—as Hughes did—from genius billionaire to shaggy recluse, caught in the grip of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Schwartz’s books, Brain Lock and The Mind and the Brain, had established him as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the underlying mechanisms and treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a condition that plagues sufferers with unreasonable thoughts and fears, which in turn compel repetitive behavior.  

DiCaprio left The Aviator with an Oscar-nominated performance and perhaps a mild case of the disease.  It reportedly took him about a year to get back to normal.  And today, his willful descent into the illness and subsequent recovery represents one of the most dramatic public examples in our popular culture on neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to change in shape, function, configuration, or size.  But Schwartz says mainstream science has yet to come to grips with an experience like DiCaprio’s, based on what Schwartz calls “self-directed neuroplasticity,” the ability to rewire your brain with your thoughts.  This kind of power doesn’t only rescue his patients, he says.  It rescues free will. [End of quote]

Brain plasticity means that the shape, size, and the number of neurons and synaptic connections change with experience.  Elizabeth Gould, professor of psychology, Princeton University, weighed in with the following:

One of the most important advances in the field of neuroscience in the last 25 years was the recognition that the adult brain exhibits both functional and structural plasticity.  Indeed, an entire subfield of neuroscience has emerged that focuses on plasticity as a basis for understanding brain function under normal conditions as well as after brain damage.  Because of this large body of work, we now know that the shape, size, and number of neurons and synaptic connections change as a result of experience. 

Rutgers University’s Paula Tallal, co-director of the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, said:

The discovery that the central nervous system is plastic—physically adaptable and as such directly modifiable through behavioral intervention—is already being used to develop a novel generation of educational and rehabilitative methods for enhancing human mental function, both in children with learning disabilities and aging adults.  Just as psychopharmacology and genetics have dominated new treatment approaches in the past 25 years, neuroplasticity treatment approaches will have the potential to revolutionize both educational and clinical intervention strategies in the next 25 years.  [End of quote]

The big news in the field of neuroscience is that the brain is plastic—it changes form over time, and words and experiences are central to this process.  Thousands of years before neuroscience was even conceived, God declares this principle over and over again in His Word.  Romans 12:2:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

The Godly renewing of the mind—making new the mind—actually transforms your entire being: mind, heart, body, soul, and spirit.  This process, through a very dramatic, life-changing experience, is what Jesus Christ calls “born again.” 

The Words of God renew the mind and we are transformed.  Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language defines transform: “To change the form of; to metamorphose.”  Metamorphose is defined: “To change into a different form.”  Again, Webster defines it in theology as follows: “Change the natural disposition and temper of a man from a state of enmity (war) to God and His law, into the image of God, or into a disposition and temper conformed to the will of God.”  [End of quote]  The call to put on the mind of Christ is the call to be transformed into the likeness of God.  God changes our entire being with words—His!

So, neuroscience now understands that the brain can be transformed.  The Word of God, the foundation of all that is true, proclaimed this revelation thousands of years ago. [End of quote]

Romans 12:2 again:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Neuroscientists know this as neuroplasticity.  Transformed simply means to change form.  God’s renewing of the mind process will change all aspects of a person’s life and it begins as the result of direct intervention of God’s Spirit in the believer’s mind.  This process of Godly mind transformation begins with a miracle and proceeds through a continual series of miracles:

• Miracle #1: Born-again.

• Miracle #2: The chain-breaking power of the open confession of Jesus Christ with the mouth.

• Miracle #3: A public water baptism by immersion.

• Miracle #4: The supernatural baptism of the Holy Ghost as received on the day of Pentecost.

• Miracle #5: The daily study of the Word of God which continues the process of mind renewal.

The born-again experience is not turning over a new leaf.  It’s a new—all new—life.  II Corinthians 5:17:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 

Neuroscience begins to understand neuroplasticity, but God is already there.  [End of quotes]

On the flap of the cover of Switch On Your Brain, we find this information about the author:

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and audiologist who has worked in the area of cognitive neuroscience since 1985.  Her pioneering work on neuroplasticity—that changes in thinking actually change the brain and can effect behavioral change—paved the way for her current research on how scientific principles are supported by Scripture and vice versa. 

Several paragraphs from Dr. Leaf’s research follow.  The doctor refers to information coming into the mind via external sources.   

This incoming information then travels through some astonishing brain structures (some of which includes the thalamus, insula, and basal ganglia) that flavor, enrich, and distribute the information all along the way.  You think with groups of brain areas (circuits and columns), not with single brain areas.  So once the information enters the brain, it is a signal that creates major cascading, intrinsic (inside your brain) activity.  The circuits and columns around the basal ganglia (deep down inside the middle of the brain), for example, get the brain into a state of expectation as preparation to build the new, incoming information.  Part of this activity is the movement of thoughts (existing memories), linked in some way to the incoming information, moving from the non-conscious metacognitive level to the conscious cognitive level. 

These thoughts in your brain look like trees in a forest.  And as the signals sweep through these trees like a wind, research shows they will activate around four to seven thought trees (memories) that will then move into the conscious, and you will become aware of them.  I call this the “breeze through the trees.” 

When you think, you also feel.  This is because thoughts have an emotional component in addition to the information, or what the actual memory is about.  This means that when you bring a thought into consciousness, you also bring up the attached emotion.  When the thought along with its emotions bubble up into the conscious mind, you feel the emotions. 

So there is a difference between emotions and feelings; every thought has emotions as part of its structure, and they are stored in the non-conscious mind.  When the thoughts move into the conscious mind, we feel the emotions of the thoughts. 

After the gathering stage, the electromagnetic signals—your thinking and those existing memories that have been brought into consciousness—speed through the hippocampus, moving toward the front of the brain—the basal forebrain and orbitofrontal cortex, which are behind the inside corners of  your eyes and above your eyebrows respectively.  The information flows through in the hippocampus for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, constantly being amplified each time it cycles to the front.

The amplification sets in motion a delightful string of events so magnificent that it can only reflect the work of your Creator. This string of events is your free will and decision-making ability, a true gift. 

This amplification means that the thought is conscious and becomes “labile,” which means it is unstable and changeable.  In fact, it must change.  The science of thought demands that change must occur either by reinforcing the thought as it is or by changing some or all of it.

The memory cannot sink back as part of your attitude into your non-conscious mind without being changed in some way.  This is marvelous news for you, but it also emphasizes the responsibility you need to take for your thought life.  No thought is harmless, nor does it stay the same—it constantly changes.  As I said in part 1, you are constantly changing the landscape of your brain moment by moment.  You are a thinking, creative being—quite brilliant. 

This constant change means that the deeper you think, the more change you can make.  This change is real and happens via electromagnetic and quantum forces as well as neurotransmitters activating genetic expression and protein synthesis. 

As a reminder, proteins are made and used to grow new branches to hold your thoughts.  So if you don’t get rid of the thought, you reinforce it.  This is phenomenal because science confirms that you can choose with your free will to interfere with genetic expression, which is protein synthesis.  [End of quotes]

The Gospel concept of renewing the mind is a process that begins dramatically and miraculously at the place Jesus calls “born again” and proceeds unto perfection when we finally see Christ face-to-face.  We not only experience mind renewal from day one of the new birth, we are commanded to actively pursue this transformational process. 

Let’s see how this works.  When I say the word PEACH, according to Dr. Leaf, four to seven associated trees of thoughts—trees of information—that have accumulated over time, arise.  You can take a pen and jot down your accumulated knowledge and experience with the peach.  At this point, Dr. Leaf says that the thought becomes “labile,” which means that the entire compendium of thought concerning the peach is unstable and changeable. 

Let’s try an experiment:  Get a tablet and pen.  I’m going to speak a word for you to consider.  At this juncture, four to seven trees of associated thought will arise from your non-conscious mind that basically represent your knowledge and experience with that word.  When I speak the word, put your electronic device on pause and begin to write the thoughts that come to mind. 

The word is “death.”

The non-conscious thought trees that arise in the unsaved could look something like this:

• Gripping fear;

• Is there a heaven?;

• Is there a hell?;

• Is there a God to whom I must give an account of my life?;

• Will my good outweigh my bad?;

• Do I have enough life insurance?;

• What will happen to my spouse and children?;

• Will anyone come to my funeral?;

• And other similar thoughts. 

When one becomes born-again, the word “death” will generate a dramatically different set of thought trees, but many, for example, may still have a gripping fear of death.  But remember, when you write down all of the associated thoughts, they become “labile.”  They are unstable and changeable.  With the Word of God, I can change thoughts.  It is the principle of renewing the mind—of bringing every thought into subjection.  Look at the thoughts you have written down concerning the word “death” and tag the ones that are negative and contrary to the Word of God.  Now take a new sheet of paper and copy the original thought list, replacing the bad thoughts with the Word of God.  Fold up the original sheet and put it aside.  Take your new thought page and read and consider it several times a day.  Each time you review the page, it will strengthen your new thought process.  Dr. Leaf teaches a 21-Step Brain Detox process.  I haven’t completed reading her book, but from the parts that I have read, I suspect it is somewhat similar to what I’ve outlined.  GodSaidManSaid does recommend that you purchase Dr. Leaf’s book and read it.  Several years ago, GodSaidManSaid outlined a 30-day mind renewal process that we dubbed Power-Speaking.  

The more you meditate on your new, corrected thoughts, the stronger they will become and the weaker the old way of thinking will become, until it fades away.  The Word of God cleanses and renews.  Ephesians 5:26-27:

26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

GOD SAID, Romans 12:2:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

GOD SAID, Ephesians 4:22-24:

22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

GOD SAID, Colossians 3:9-10:

9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;

10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:

GOD SAID, II Corinthians 10:3-5:

3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:

4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)

5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

MAN SAID: The human brain is the most magnificent structure in the universe.  Isn’t it exciting how it just evolved out of nothing? 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, “Unlock and Develop God’s Brain Power”

GodSaidManSaid, “Let’s Change Our Brains”

Leaf, C., Switch On Your Brain, Baker Books, 2013

 

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