Zen and its Western cousin, "Mindfulness" were a stop on my long journey to self-discovery. They introduced me to a line of investigation through subjective experience. In spite of the strong tradition against a philosophical interpretation in Taoism and Zen, all this came with a certain amount of "theory". To make a long story short, these disciplines challenge our idea of the "self" and, following ancient Buddhist tradition, regard the self (whatever that is) as impermanent**. Some would go as far as to claim that the self is an illusion. The Western "scientific" branch would claim that there is no "self" to be found in the brain. Sam Harris is a leading popularizer of this view and he claims extensive subjective experience (hundreds of hours of meditation) as his "evidence". Antonio Damasio takes a different view, based on thousands of case studies (a more trustworthy kind of "evidence"). His view is that our fee...

I think of brain waves  as the process of "re-hashing" memes in the brain. A "meme" corresponds to a fantastically complex pattern [1] of activation of neurons. Activation of these patterns can be observed outside of the skull due to electrical side-effects of neuron "firing". I envision a looping chain reaction of memes, some at a very low level (hardly qualifying as memes), such as the sensation of breathing and some much higher, such as a friend speaking to you. The wave frequency corresponds to the speed of "unpacking" one meme into another, or how fast one meme "reminds" you of another. It's important to think of the brain as active and dynamic rather than a static container of "knowledge" and a "soul" sitting around inside the head observing he world. The looping never stops. When we are conscious (Beta waves, about 15 to 40 cycles per second - Herz). this looping is consciousness.  As we think harder, the...