I wanted to take up a simple but mystifying question recently posed by one responder, Richard Thomas: Why does pain hurt? He points to the fact that brain activity consists only of electromagnetic and chemical reactions. Why do these harmless events, the same kind occurring in a compass, electrical turbine, or test tube, register as something that hurts? Or to pose the larger question: How does the raw data of the universe get transformed by the brain into a world full of sights and sounds? To answer this question, we have to go beyond current explanations in neurology to an invisible level, but that isn't the same as saying we are off to the land of mystical reveries. In every Eastern tradition there is some version of the "subtle body," which parallels the nervous system. Because they didn't practice neurology, the ancient sages of China and India couldn't see nerves, so they conducted their research subjectively. Looking at the body from a deep state of awareness, they saw myriad channels of consciousness or life force coursing everywhere, connecting every part of the anatomy, animating every tissue. To them, there was no hard distinction between life force (Chi or Prana) and consciousness. Where one flowed, so did the other. This invisible neurology answered the question of why pain hurts very easily: If everything is conscious at a deep level, then there is no "raw" or unconscious data. The transformation of neural impulses into thoughts and sensations was just a twist from object to subject. Consciousness penetrates both observer and observed. In modern science, neurology has not come close to supplying an equivalent answer, because in its denial of subjectivity and its reliance only on observable brain activity, neurology provides no interface between the two domains of subject and object. Fixed between the molecules of glucose that nourish the brain and the thought storm that fills it is an impassable gulf. It is certainly true that we know how the nerves conduct pain signals. We can break these signals down into chemical and electrical components. We can trace where the signals go to be processed in the brain. None of this specificity goes to the level of the question, however. In what way does any chemical turn into a subjective event? Let me give an analogy: If a car runs into a telephone pole, the explanation for what happened can be material. A mechanic can analyze exactly how the moving parts of the car operated. A neurologist perhaps one day could analyze all the processes operating in the motor cortex. If the accident was due to a mechanical cause -- such as a faulty steering system or alcohol in the brain -- all is well and good. But in this case perhaps the driver wanted to commit suicide. He had a subjective intention, and no amount of analysis of chemicals and material parts supplies that answer. You'd have to know what was going on at the level of mind, not the level of brain. This is one area where we have the best chance of bringing consciousness into science, because the invisible neurology that underlies acupuncture and Ayurveda -- not to mention many forms of hands-on healing -- produces results. This is demonstrable, and now we have several decades of evidence (I have covered this vast field more thoroughly in various books, but so have hundreds of other writers and qualified practitioners). An acupuncture needle is used to penetrate and stimulate the subtle body. Current explanations that deny the subtle body speak instead about nerve gateways and other physical phenomena. This would not bother the ancient sages; they were not out to replace objectivity with subjectivity but to marry the two. The subtle nerves in Aurveda, known as srotas, are physical nerves at the material level, just as the physical heart is a material expression of an emotional and energy center located in the middle of the chest. If this notion of a subtle body makes more inroads into Western thinking, there are huge implications for genetics and the whole field of mind and body. But for the moment, realizing that this is a foreign concept -- and therefore one open to the usual scorn and skepticism, one awaits the slow tide of evidence to continue to rise.
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