ABSTRACT
Right at the beginning of this book, the ‘obvious’ statement was made that you can’t have awareness without a brain to have it in. This was a bit rash and has now to be qualified a good deal in the light of all that has been discussed. It appears that you probably can’t have awareness without an energy-using cellular mechanism to originate it, and you can’t have any very complex or sophisticated awareness without a brain to modulate it. We have not discovered anything to prevent us from supposing that cells other than those in the brain might sometimes directly participate in forming the structures which comprise awareness. Whether this is a real possibility would depend on (unknown) details of the basis of the Bose condensation. But maybe, when a gymnast, for instance, performs one of her amazing feats, consciousness really does centre in her muscles. Perhaps those odd visceral sensations that we all get from time to time are at least partly derived from one’s stomach or wherever and are not wholly a cerebral reaction to . information coming over autonomic nervous pathways-though central systems must also be involved or the sensations could not be remembered or reported.
