In modern neuroscience, there is a strong tendency to reduce our entire identity and consciousness to the physical brain. However, pioneering studies suggest that our conscious awareness cannot be entirely explained by biology alone.

Dr. Wilder Penfield, considered the father of neurosurgery, conducted profound experiments to discover if the brain was the true source of consciousness. Because specific parts of the brain are associated with specific functions, Dr. Penfield placed an electrode on a conscious subject’s brain to activate the motor nervous system. When he activated that part of the brain, the subject’s hand went up.

Dr. Penfield asked, “Did you raise your hand?”

The subject replied, “No, I did not. You did.”

When he deactivated the electrode and the hand fell, the subject again confirmed they did not lower it themselves. Dr. Penfield then took his probes and activated various other parts of the brain. Subjects suddenly remembered childhood conversations, the smell of a flower from a past walk, or the taste of a delicacy their mother had prepared. People had all kinds of vivid, recalled experiences.

Yet, remarkably, no part of the brain, when activated, gave the subject the sense of agency. They experienced awareness of what was happening, but they never felt the internal agency of doing it themselves.

After studying brain science for forty years, Dr. Penfield concluded in his book The Mystery of the Mind that the brain is like a computer, but it is programmed by something outside of itself. The source of our consciousness is extra-cerebral—it comes from somewhere beyond the physical brain. Our fundamental identity and our sense of agency go far beyond our biology.

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13.34 O son of Bharata, as the sun alone illuminates all this universe, so does the living entity, one within the body, illuminate the entire body by consciousness.