There has been a lot of debate as to where the nature of consciousness (that feeling of ‘me’ doing it) actually resides. I would tend to rely more on the fact that consciousness exists outside of the brain. Why? Maybe intuition, analysis, experiences of people and so forth.

One of the best ways to explain nature of consciousness is to consider your brain as a TV set. It is very beautifully explained in the below video as well.

Both TV and the brain have their complicated set of connections that finally make them work. In the case of TV we feel that the TV is working based on its miniature circuitry. But in real the TV is not generating the content. The content is being sourced through the antenna onto it and its circuitry gets activated. It only serves as a medium. Likewise in the case of the brain, while one can identify with various regions of the brain. Various patterns in relation to various emotional states. It could well be only the receiver which is processing the information. It might not really be the creator.

But then even if the creator is somewhere else, so what? Do we have control over it. Is it through the Godly phenomenon or again, only scientific. Is it a necessity that all these reincarnation, out-of-body experience or near death experiences cannot be through the phenomenon of science? Why can’t your soul or the non physical self be only a result of some other scientific phenomenon for that matter, not necessarily something that you attribute to God which results in the fear based moral approach towards life? Some undiscovered laws of nature, hmmm?

So if you look at the sequence of confusion all the thinkers are faced with today, it goes somewhat as follows.

If you make a decision, you don’t really know whether it is taken through your brain programming (over which you have no control, illusionary freewill) or through deeper areas of the heart or the soul or the soul residing in the heart.

If it is through the soul nevertheless, and is a non-physical entity, then still do you have any control over what it thinks? Is it supposed to be in your control?

Assume that you do have control over what you think through the medium of soul which transmits signals to the machine called brain, but then is it god made in which case you are supposed to act in accordance with the higher purpose or just scientific evolved?

If it is god made, then maybe you are supposed to get lured towards morality. But at what stage and how are you supposed to really change stuff? Some people with a good soul but a bad brain (one with a tumor) have in the past become psychopaths and have harmed the society. Is it their fault? Did their soul still have to overcome all instincts produced by the damaged brain and flow against the tide? And if soul happens to be scientific, then whatever you think and do, does it at all matter?

And finally, what repercussion does it have on the phenomenon of reincarnation and karma.

You see, starting from the point of where nature of consciousness resides can open up a whole Pandora box of questions that modern day thinkers are grappled with.