Tag Archives: Brain

DO YOU TRUST YOUR GUT FEELINGS?

Everyone—you and me included—has heard their small inner voice speak. It might have been a muffled word of sage advice, a loud yell of urgent caution, or a simple suggestion towards the right move. Evolutionary, our subconscious source of wisdom has served us well—“Whoa! Don’t step outside the cave right now” to “Hey! This wheel and axle invention will be big.” But as real as intuition is, many people choose to ignore their instincts. How about you? Do you trust your gut feelings?

There are lots of terms for gut feelings. Intuition is the main one, but there’re differences of opinion as to what constitutes raw instinct, subtle intuition based on life experience, and plain old gut feelings—also known as the sixth sense, vibes, foresight, precognition, visceral nudges, being-in-the-world, hunches, and downright lucky guesses. These are socially-acceptable labels, not to be confused with pseudoscience stuff like tactic knowledge, remote viewing, morphic resonance, ESP, clairvoyance, and cryptesthesia. Then there’s a half-way, new-age idea called Grok. You might want to Google that.

What got me going on today’s post is a recent comment left on an old DyingWords thread where a fellow made a statement that relying on gut feelings amounted to as much as taking a ride on a Ouija board. “Hang on a moment,” I replied. “I have decades of investigation experience and, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, I’ve come to rely on my gut feelings—hunches, intuition, Grok, or whatever you wanna call them.”

Just a quick personal story before we move on to look at the philosophy, psychology, and physiology behind intuition as well as taking a test to see how much you trust your gut feelings. In 1985, I was part of a police Emergency Response Team (ERT or SWAT for Americans). We were sent to the frozen wilds of the Canadian north to arrest an armed and murderous madman. Michael Oros, the bad guy, got the drop on my partner and me just as I had this incredible gut feeling that he’d silently crept up behind us. I spun around right as the fire-fight started. Because of this intuitive gut feeling—this overpowering presence of imminent danger—I was able to react to save my life and probably the lives of other teammates.

I didn’t imagine that gut feeling. It was as real as the keyboard I’m writing this on, and I have no explanation for it other than we, as human beings, are hard-wired to receive subconscious information through a process best known as intuition. Whether we use our gut feeling’s information or discard it is a matter of personal choice.

Gut feeling intuition has fascinated scientists and philosophers. It fascinates me, as well, and I don’t qualify as either a scientist or a philosopher. It’s not just people who have intuition and gut feelings. Why do dogs seem to know when their owners are coming home, and why do horses naturally understand what people to trust and what people to mistrust? Is it animal common sense?

Surely there’s more to human intuition/gut feeling than common sense. Something else is at work here, and the philosophical theories go back as far as Plato. In his book Republic, Plato defined intuition as “a fundamental capacity for human reason to comprehend the true nature of reality—a pre-existing knowledge residing in the soul of eternity—truths not arrived at by reason but accessed using a knowledge already present in a dormant form and accessible to our intuitive capacity”. Plato called this concept anamnesis.

Ancient Eastern and old Western philosophers intertwined intuition with religion and spirituality. From Hinduism’s Vedic, we get two-fold reasoning for human gut feelings (mana in Sanskrit). First, is imprinting of psychological experiences constructed through sensory information—the mind seeking to become aware of the external world. Second, a natural action when the mind is aware of itself, resulting in humans being awareness of their existence and their environment.

In Buddhism, you’ll find a similar take on intuition. Monks teach that intuition is a faculty in the mind of immediate knowledge that’s beyond the mental process of conscious thinking, as conscious thought cannot necessarily access subconscious information or render such information into a communicable form. Gut feelings, according to Buddhism, are mental states immediately connecting the Universal Mind with your individual, discriminating mind.

More modern-day philosophers, like Descartes, say intuition is “pre-existing knowledge gained through rational reasoning or discovering truth through contemplation that manifests in subconscious messaging.” Descartes goes on to say, “Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be true is true no matter if I see it subconsciously.”

Immanuel Kant offered this: “Intuition consists of basic sensory information provided by the cognitive faculty of sensibility equivalent to what loosely might be called perception through conscious and subconscious.”

In Psychological Types written in 1916 by Carl Jung, you’ll read this: “Intuition is an irrational function, opposed most directly by sensation and less opposed strongly by the rational functions of thinking and feeling. Intuition is perception via the unconscious using sense-perception only as a starting point to bring forward ideas, images, possibilities, ways out of a blocked situation, by a process that is mostly unconscious.”

Freud—always the contrarian—called bullshit on Jung. Freud said, “Knowledge can only be attained through the conscious intellectual manipulation of carefully made observations. I reject any other means of acquiring knowledge such as intuition (gut feelings).”

That’s a short canvassing of philosophers. So, what do the scientists say about gut feelings?

Well, neurologists have a lot to offer about how intuition is biologically tied into the gut. They say our gut, our gastrointestinal (GI) system, has an entire mind of its own called the Enteric Nervous System (ENS) that operates alongside, but independent of, our brain and Central Nervous System (CNS) functions. Our ENS is two layers of more than 100 million nerve cells lining the entire GI system from start to finish—from our esophagus to our anus, or from our yap to our hoop as a layperson might say.

This incredibly complex ENS has a full-time job of regulating our GI tract whose main purpose is to keep us alive through sustainable nutrition. Neurologists say the ENS acts on instinct and constantly exchanges information to our brain through our CNS. When the ENS senses something awry, it immediately alerts the brain that can choose to react consciously or subconsciously.

That works both ways. When the brain consciously or subconsciously alarms, it notifies the ENS which just might explain why you get that feeling in your stomach—that gut feeling. It’s why anxiety can bung you up or make you throw up. In the end, it might be diarrhea that ultimately lets you know to trust your gut feelings.

Okay, that explains the neuroscience behind the ENS gut feeling reaction. But it doesn’t explain what intuition is, and it’s probably worthwhile to look at a definition of intuition which seems to be a different process than a physical gut feeling. Here’s the best differentiating explanation I could find about instinct, gut feeling, and intuition.

Instinct — our innate inclination toward a particular behavior as opposed to a learned response.

Gut Feeling — a hunch or a sensation that appears quickly in consciousness (notable enough to be acted upon if one chooses) without us being fully aware of the underlying reasons for its occurrence.

Intuition — the process giving us the ability to know something directly without analytic reasoning, bridging the gap between the conscious and subconscious parts of our mind, and also between instinct and reason.

If I understand this correctly, gut feelings are short flashes of raw sensory alerts while intuition is a higher-evolved mechanism of subconsciously processing information without stopping to run reams of paper through the mental printer. So, my reasoning goes, intuition must be more of a learned behavior manufactured through experiences, both consciously built and subconsciously retained. Gut feelings, on the other hand, are more instinctive and primal.

I looked around for scientific studies on intuition and found credible works by Daniel Kahneman who won a Nobel Prize for his work on human judgment and decision-making. Without going into detail, Dr. Kahneman and his group conclusively proved there was a valid science behind human intuition which included—not surprisingly—gut feelings.

Another scientific study led by Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Plank Institute for Human Development, agreed. Dr. Gigerenzer stated, “People rarely make decisions on the basis of reason alone, especially when the problems faced are complex. I think intuition’s merit has been vastly underappreciated as a form of unconscious intelligence.”

These intuition studies tie into works done by Dr. Gary Klein’s organization at the Natural Decision Making Movement who studied real-life decision processing by people in high-stress situations. They observed police officers, soldiers, paramedics, nurses, and fighter pilots coming to the conclusion that these professionals’ intuitive abilities developed from recognizing regularities, repetitions, and similarities between information available to them combined with their past experiences.

Out of their scientific work of studying intuitive reactions under stressful and challenging situations involving time pressure, uncertainty, unclear goals, and organizational restraints came a fighter pilot training model called the OODA Loop or the Circle of Competence. It’s a simple formula every high-performance jet jockey now memorizes to the point of being instinctive, intuitive, and gut-felt. It goes like this:

O — Observe
O — Orient
D — Decide
A — Act

So, is developed intuition, or its cruder form of visceral gut feeling, reliable? I’d say if it’s good enough to train fighter pilots with then it’s good enough for us. Let’s put it to the test.

I found a terribly non-scientific (but totally fun) click-bait site with a ten-question roll-through called the Queendom Gut Instinct Test. You can take it for a spin here:

https://www.queendom.com/queendom_tests/transfer

To score your results, you have to click the boxes at the site, but don’t worry—there’s no cost involved, and it’s an interesting self-perspective based on your gut reaction answers. These are the ten questions and multiple choice answers:

1. Did you ever get the sense that something was wrong or someone was in danger and ended up being right?
Yes ———  No ———

2. Do you believe that your gut instinct is at least as reliable as your rational mind?
Yes ———  No ———

3. Do you believe that a person can give off good or bad “vibes?”
Yes ———  No ———

4. You’re shopping with your partner for a new home. The real estate agent you’re working with pulls up to a beautiful house in the exact style you are looking for. However, when you walk through the front door, you are suddenly overcome with a sense of dread and foreboding. The place has a really creepy ambiance. What would you do?
A ——— Walk right back out. There is definitely something wrong with this place.
B ——— Ask the agent about the house’s history. If something bad happened here, I am not      buying it.
C ——— Do a tour of the place, since I am here anyway. If I can’t shake the negative feeling       AND there are major structural issues with the house, then I won’t buy it.
D ——— Shake it off. Even if something occurred, my partner and I will fill it with better memories.
F ——— Make an offer. Who cares about the house’s history? This is my dream home!

5. Two weeks before you’re about to go on a trip overseas, you have a recurring dream that the airplane you’re on needs to make an emergency landing due to a technical failure. What would you do?
A ——— Ignore it. It’s just a sign that I am nervous about flying.
B ——— Go on the trip, but say a few prayers or bring my lucky charm.
C ——— Reschedule my flight. There’s obviously a reason why I am having this dream every night.

6. Your friend introduces you to his or her new significant other. From the first conversation, you get the sense that there is something off about this person – like he/she is hiding something, or not being genuine. What would you do?
A ——— Dismiss it as paranoia. I barely know this person, so I have no right to judge him or her so quickly.
B ——— Put the feeling aside for now, but keep an eye out for suspicious behavior.
C ——— Try to probe a bit and/or do some research to see if there is something to my hunch.
D ——— Warn my friend to be careful and not to trust this person too quickly – my gut is never wrong.

7. Time to upgrade your wheels. How would you most likely approach this purchase?
A ——— I would conduct some research, weigh the pros and cons of different models, and then find a car that fits my needs and budget.
B ——— I would do some research on different models, then test drive the car to see how I feel in it.
C ——— I would have a general idea of what I want, but it would come down to one thing: if it’s the right car for me, I will know it when I’m in it.

8. You’re out buying coffee when you come across an old colleague who left the company to start his own business. He had a major fallout with management when he was turned down for a promotion. He says his startup is doing great, and he offers you a job on his team with a lucrative salary as well as benefits. It sounds like an amazing opportunity – but your gut is telling you to turn it down. What would you do?
A ——— Thank him for the offer, but decline. My gut is obviously picking up on something that he’s not telling me.
B ——— Ask him to give me some time to consider the offer, and then do some research on his company to see if it’s doing as well as he says it is.
C ——— Jump on the offer. There is no way I would turn down this amazing chance for a better job!

9. As you’re leaving your friend’s place and walking to your car, you hear a clear voice in your head say, “Don’t drive home. Stay here for the night.” You decide to listen and sleep over. The next morning, you find out that there was a fatal 8-car accident the night before – on the exact road you were planning to take, at the exact time you were about to leave. What would you most likely be thinking?
A ——— “Interesting coincidence.”
B ——— “That’s so strange. Maybe someone is looking out for me.”
C ——— “I am so grateful I listened to that warning in my head.”

10. You’re at a convenience store to pick up a lottery ticket. How do you choose your numbers?
A ——— I let the machine pick them at random.
B ——— I play the same numbers every time.
C ——— I pick the numbers based on what my gut tells me.

Again, you’ll have to take the test at its online site to get your Gut Instinct Score. How did I make out? I got an 85, and here’s what the site said about me:

Your gut instinct has been your ally. It’s that older, wiser friend who always has your back and stops you from making stupid decisions. When your gut tells you to pay attention, to be careful, to not trust someone, or to go right instead of left, you won’t question the information. You are in tune with your intuition. Chances are that on those rare occasions when you didn’t trust your gut, you regretted it. Just keep in mind that your logical reasoning is your ally too. It is not the antagonist to your intuition, it’s simply an additional source of information and a way to process it all. Just as you shouldn’t rely solely on your intuition to make major financial decisions, you also shouldn’t rely on logic alone as a survival mechanism. Make good use of both. When you use analytical reasoning to evaluate a problem and your intuition to pick up on deeper, more hidden sources of information, you’ve got the best of both worlds.

The Gut Instinct Test doesn’t tell you which questions you got “right or wrong”. I think there’s some sort of algorithmic scoring process that gives you a value which is why I got an 85 or an 8.5 out of 10. I know which one I bombed (for sure) and that was the lotto number thing. I always use the machine quick-pick because I’m too lazy to think it out for myself.

How about you DyingWords followers? Do you trust your gut feelings? And if you take the test, how about sharing your results?

THE TRUE STORY ABOUT WHO REALLY STOLE JFK’S BRAIN

United States President John F. Kennedy’s assassination is the mother of all conspiracy theories. There’s been more BS, crap and craziness written about JFK’s murder than all the stuff ever spewed out of Donald Trump’s yap. However, there’s one bizarre angle to the JFK murder story that’s true. Someone actually stole JFK’s preserved brain from the National Archives, and the real mystery is who.

The facts surrounding the JFK Assassination are fairly straightforward. On November 22nd, 1963 the 35th President of the United States was fatally shot while riding in an open limousine through Dealy Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. Three rounds were fired. The first missed. The second struck Kennedy in the upper back, exited through his throat and seriously wounded Governor John Connally who sat in front of the Commander-in-Chief. The third bullet hit President Kennedy in the back of his head and killed him.

Despite what conspiracy theorists want to believe, Lee Harvey Oswald—acting alone—triggered all three shots. Oswald was a seriously-troubled young man employed at the Texas School Depository building where he fired from the sixth floor—now known as the “sniper’s nest”. Lee Oswald used an inexpensive, military-surplus rifle he obtained through mail order and left it behind when he fled the scene.

It’s simply a case of a lone nut with a cheap rifle from a tall building or a crazy who brought his gun to work and shot the President. Oswald then killed a Dallas police officer who street-checked him and was later captured hiding in a movie theater. Then, Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered—fatally shot by another nut-job named Jack Ruby. This occurred in the basement of the Dallas PD headquarters in what was the biggest breach of security in the history of policing.

JFK’s missing brain story began at his autopsy at the U.S. Navy hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Before getting to that strange-but-true tale, it’s important to know why the autopsy was done near Washington, D.C. and not in Dallas, Texas where the murder took place.

The bullets struck John Fitzgerald Kennedy at 12:30 p.m. He was in the emergency ward at Parkland Hospital within ten minutes where doctors hopelessly tried to save his life. They declared Kennedy dead at 1:00 p.m. and his body remained in the ER while authorities frantically tried to figure out what to do.

In 1963, there was no federal law regarding murdering the President of the United States. This was state jurisdiction under the Texas Penal Code, and the body possession / medical examination responsibility fell to the Dallas County coroner, Dr. Earl Rose. Rose worked at Parkland hospital and was nearby when Kennedy expired. Upon the declaration of death, Dr. Rose prepared to do a forensic autopsy which he was imminently qualified to do.

“No *#@$*#& way, Dr. Rose,” said the Kennedy team. “We’re getting the *bleep* out of Dallas right *#@$*#& now and Jack Kennedy’s coming with us.” A heated argument and physical scuffle arose as Dr. Rose blocked the door—backed-up by a Dallas police officer and a Justice of the Peace. On the Kennedy side were the Secret Service, led by Agent Roy Kellerman, and the president’s chief aid, enforcer and boyhood friend, Kenny O’Donnell.

Complicating matters was that about-to-be-sworn-in President Lyndon Johnson was terrified of a plot to kill them all. He, too, desperately wanted to get back to Washington’s safety. Air Force One sat ready at Love field which could have quickly swept Johnson away.

Except for one problem. Jackie Kennedy refused to leave her now-deceased husband in Dallas. She would not get on that plane without Jack, and there was no way Johnson wanted to be seen “abandoning a beautiful widow”. LBJ “et al” quickly worked a deal.

Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade got involved. He knew the law and knew it was an offense under the Coroner Act to remove a body from the State of Texas without the presiding coroner’s permission. That was not happening. Dr. Rose wasn’t about to give up the murder-victim-of-the-century, and D.A. Wade wanted to get out of the mess. Wade looked up the penalty for illegally removing (stealing) a body from Texas jurisdiction.

The fine was $100.00. Kenny O’Donnell had it in his wallet and forked over the hundred bucks to the J.P. With that, the president’s body was out the Parkland door, onto the plane and headed for home. That left the question of where to do the autopsy on the deceased U.S. President.

The new Johnson Administration thought it would be a nice touch to let the grieving widow decide. Jackie Kennedy, in a shocked and sickened state, thought that because “Jack was a Naval man” the autopsy should be done at the Navy facility in Bethesda. It seemed like a fitting touch.

President Kennedy’s body arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital at around 8:00 p.m. EST. To say the scene was a circus or a gong show was apt. Two Naval doctors with pathology—not forensic—experience led the medical team. Once they realized gunshot wounds were out of their wheelhouse, they brought in a third doctor who’d seen and treated a lot of battlefield wounds.

Between them, they bungled and fumbled through JFK’s autopsy. Complicating matters and adding stress to a stressful situation, they performed before a total audience of thirty-two (32) individuals who came and went throughout the four-hour procedure. Some were assistants who had a reasonable role. Others were mere spectators who had absolutely no business being there.

Critics look at JFK’s postmortem exam as being the worst forensic autopsy ever conducted. That’s not entirely fair, as they mostly got it right. They concluded that JFK was shot twice. One in the back—the other in the head. Both bullets originated from behind and above the presidential limousine and (from later lab testing) both bullets came from Oswald’s 6.5 mm Italian Carcano rifle.

What they didn’t get right was the correct anatomical placement of the bullet entrance points on JFK’s body. They used flexible and non-precise reference points to place the wounds. This led to enormous speculation about shooter numbers and sniper locations. It’ll probably never end.

What the autopsy team did get precise was information about injuries to the president’s brain. The JFK autopsy report has been publicly available for decades. There’s no secret there. You can download it from the internet, and you can find the actual autopsy photos if you know where to look. Here’s what the pathologists had to say about JFK’s brain:

Supplementary Report of Autopsy Number A63-272 President John F. Kennedy

Gross Description of Brain

Following formalin fixation, the brain weighs 1500 grams. The right cerebral hemisphere is found to be markedly disrupted. There is a longitudinal laceration of the right hemisphere which is para-sagittal in position approximately 2.5 cm to the right of the midline which extends from the tip of the occipital lobe posteriorly to the tip of the frontal lobe anteriorly. The base of the laceration is situated approximately 4.5 cm below the vertex in the white matter. There is considerable loss of cortical substance above the base of the laceration, particularly in the parietal lobe. The margins of this laceration are at all points jagged and irregular, with additional lacerations extending in varied directions and for varying distances from the main laceration. In addition, there is a laceration of the corpus callosum extending from the genu to the tail. Exposed in this latter laceration are the interiors of the right lateral and third ventricles.

When viewed from the vertex, the left cerebral hemisphere is intact. There is marked engorgement of meningeal blood vessels of the left temporal and frontal regions with considerable associated subarachnoid hemorrhage. The gyri and sulci over the left hemisphere are of essentially normal size and distribution. Those on the right are too fragmented and distorted for a satisfactory description.

When viewed from the basilar aspect, the disruption of the right cortex is again obvious. There is a longitudinal laceration of the mid-brain through the floor of the third ventricle just behind the optic chiasm and mammillary bodies. This laceration particularly communicates with an oblique 1.5 cm tear through the left cerebral peduncle. There are irregular superficial lacerations over the basilar aspects of the left temporal and frontal lobes.

The supplementary autopsy report goes on to describe cross-section slides taken for microscopic inspection. It notes that no brain irregularities were identified outside of the catastrophic gunshot damage. The report also states that autopsy materials including photos were “delivered by hand to Rear Admiral George W. Buckley. MC, USN, White House Physician” who was President Kennedy’s personal doctor.

In layman’s terms, the JFK autopsy report describes massive trauma to the right side of the president’s brain. Nearly half of it was gone—blown away by the rifle bullet which can be graphically seen in Frame 313 of the infamous Zapruder film that captured the assassination. The other half was seriously damaged by the impact’s shock.

Conspiracy theorists like to destroy the JFK autopsy proceedings by pointing out what they see as inconsistencies like the report stating the brain weighed 1,500 grams. “Hang on,” the CTs say. “There’s lots of information on the net that says a typical adult human male’s brain weighs around 1,400 to 1,500 grams. So, JFK’s brain must have still been mostly intact… or, better yet, replaced at the autopsy to cover up something super-sinister like the shooter from the Grassy Knoll.”

Breathe easy, Conspiracy Theorists. The report clearly stipulates “following fixation in formalin” which is standard autopsy protocol. It’s not easy to cross-section a fresh brain and make thin slices for histology slides. Once a brain soaks in formalin (a formaldehyde-based solution) it becomes rubbery and workable. The process typically takes two to three weeks.

Formalin fixing amplifies tissue weight. It makes perfect sense that part of JFK’s brain fixed in formalin would weigh the same as a complete and non-fixed mass. Nothing to see here, CTs. Maybe keep on something like how Castro and the Mob cooperated to place multiple assassins around Dealy and let them pack up their guns then escape without evidence.

No, the real mystery in the JFK case is what actually happened to the president’s formalin-fixed brain after the autopsy, and how it disappeared from a locked vault at the United States National Archives in Washington, D.C.

John Kennedy’s body was released from the Bethesda morgue in the early morning hours of November 23, 1963. A funeral home team did the best they could to prepare the body for viewing. Privately, the Kennedy family saw the post-autopsy corpse, but the casket was never opened to the public.

President Kennedy’s burial took place on November 25th. Millions around the world watched the procession on TV, and many thousands lined the route from the U.S. Capitol to Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River in Virginia. Here, the fallen president was laid to rest—temporarily.

Back to the missing brain. There’s no transfer date on their report, but it’s likely the autopsy doctors gave the brain and related histology evidence to Dr. Buckley around the middle of December 1963. The brain and related tissue couldn’t be interred with Kennedy’s body along with the burial. So, that presented the issue of what to do with them, including the grotesque autopsy photos. The Kennedy family abhorred the thought of this gruesome material getting into public hands and being put on display like a side-show.

National Archive records confirmed they received the John Fitzgerald Kennedy autopsy materials in February of 1965. They were released to the Archives by Robert F. Kennedy’s signature, and that included the brain which was contained in a stainless steel receptacle. The effects were logged into the archives and stayed in safekeeping. That was until October 31st, 1966 when someone noticed President Kennedy’s brain and other tissues had vanished. Yes, it was Halloween, and someone had stolen them.

Meanwhile—unknown to the public—the Kennedy family prepared for President Kennedy’s permanent resting place. Somewhere in 1965, the family had Jack Kennedy exhumed and stored in a secure and secret location while they re-designed and built the Arlington grave site. They moved the grave slightly away from the original location and built a solid base that could withstand the millions of visitors who visited the shrine. That included a modern, natural gas eternal flame to replace the old and hastily-built propane torch along with granite flagstones brought in from New England.

In the middle of the night on March 14th, 1967 the Kennedy family re-interred JFK’s body in the new facility. Present were Jackie Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Edward (Ted) Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson. Also re-interred were the two Kennedy children who died at birth and were moved from their Massachusetts burial spots to be placed with their father.

Nothing was said about the missing brain for years—publicly. The vast majority of citizens never knew it was gone, let alone being stolen. That cat came out of the bag during The JFK Assassination Records Review Board proceedings that took place between 1992 and 1998 which were only recently released under the 2016 Freedom of Information Act.

There, in the files of the 1977 Rockefeller Commission, was the answer as to who stole President Kennedy’s brain. This commission was the first official inquiry after the Warren Commission, and it formed to quell conspiracy rumors. Unfortunately, it probably did more harm than good just as what happened during the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations that concluded President Kennedy’s assassination was “probably the result of a conspiracy”. They based this erroneous conclusion solely on the bogus interpretation of a Dallas PD dispatch recording that allegedly caught four shots rather than three.

The Rockefeller Commission took evidence from United States Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall and questioned him about the brain’s whereabouts. This is what Marshall told the commissioners:

“Robert Kennedy obtained and disposed of these materials himself, without permission or informing anyone else. He was concerned that these materials would be placed on public display and wished to dispose of them to eliminate such a possibility.”

No one will ever truly know where JFK’s brain is today. The most likely scenario is it was buried along with the president’s re-interred body in Arlington Cemetery. But, one thing’s for sure. It was Bobby Kennedy who stole it.

INTERCONNECT — FINDING YOUR PLACE, PURPOSE AND MEANING IN THE UNIVERSE

This piece is downloadable in full-length PDF format by clicking the blue bar button at the screen’s top or as a Kindle eBook and PDF through links at the end.

Once upon a time, a youth lay on their back and gazed in awe at the starry sky. The moon waned as a dim crescent—God’s Thumbnail, some call it—which let the universal brilliance of consciousness resonate in the youth’s eyes. Billions of fireballs blazed above, and countless more stars couldn’t be seen. The cosmos had cracked its coat. Like a galactic exhibitionist teasing eternal entropy, the universe flashed a perfect picture of order defying chaos and displayed an unbashful interconnection with all its occupants, including the star-gazing youth.

If you remember… that youth was you. Regardless if your years are still young, you’ve reached middle-age or are now advanced in time, the wonder of universal questions remains etched in your mind. Who are you? Where did you come from? Where are you going? And what is your interconnected place, purpose and meaning in the universe?

These are timeless queries people like you’ve asked since humans first consciously observed the heavenly heights. Long ago, your ancestors used their emerging awareness to question universal curiosities. It’s a natural thing for humankind to look for simple answers to straightforward questions and, no doubt, you’ve queried them many times during your earthly existence without receiving any clear response.

For centuries, sages and scientists pondered the meaning of existence within the universe. They’ve debated scientific theories and proposed philosophical solutions to deep puzzles boldly presented in the macro and micro worlds. You’ll find narrow common ground on who’s right and who’s wrong which leaves you to wonder what nature’s realities truly are.

Albert Einstein equated that science without philosophy was lame and philosophy without science was blind. That great scientific sage also spent the second half of his life looking for the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) that interconnects everything in the universe. That includes your place, purpose and meaning.

As wise and astute as Einstein was, he didn’t complete his mission of tying the universe into a nicely packaged bow. It’s not that he didn’t believe all parts of the universe were intrinsically interconnected. Einstein knew in his gut that all physical laws and natural processes reported to one central command. That, ultimately, is the universal dominance of consciousness that allowed your creation and will one day destroy you through eternal entropy.

This isn’t a religious treatise you’re reading. No, far from it. It’s simply one person’s later-in-life reflection on three interconnected and universal curiosities. What’s your place? What’s your purpose? And, what’s the meaning in your life?

To find sensible suggestions, it’s necessary to dissect what’s learned (so far) of universal properties and what’s known about you as a human. You’re a conscious being housed in a physical vessel and controlled by universal principles. You had no choice in how you came to be here, but you certainly have choices now. Those include placing yourself in a safe and prosperous environment, developing a productive purpose and enjoying a rewarding meaning from the limited time you’re granted to be alive.

At the end of this discourse you’ll find a conclusion about your place, purpose and meaning in the universe. It might be one person’s opinion, but it’s based on extensive research and over six decades of personal experience. However, for the conclusion to make sense you need to take a little tour through the universal truths.

Ahead are a layman’s look at the origin of the universe, classical and quantum physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, neuroscience and the life-changing principle of entropy. It’s also a dive into what’s not known about the biggest scientific and philosophical mystery of all—how consciousness manifests through the human brain and how entropy tries to kill it. Now, if you’re ready to interconnect with the universe, here’s what your place, purpose and meaning truly are.

The universe is enormous. It’s absolutely huge. There aren’t proper adjectives in the English language to describe just how big the universe really is. Perhaps the right word is astronomical which means exceeding great or enormous.

People often use the word “cosmos” interchangeably with “universe”. That’s not correct. Cosmos refers to the visible world extending beyond Earth and outward to the heavens. The universe incorporates all that’s in the macroscopic or outward realm, but the term also drills down and incorporates everything within the micro-regions of molecules, atoms and then into sub-atomic realities where quantum stuff gets seriously strange.

In Chemistry, Biology and Physics 101, you learned you’re created of energized matter built of complex material formed by atomic and molecular chains. So is every set-piece in the micro and macro universe. All visible matter contains material made of atomic structures that strictly obey standard operating procedures set down during the universe’s birth.

How that happened is explained by a few different theories. Religious accounts, depending on the flavor, hold that an omniscient supernatural power created the universe at will and for a vain purpose. Current scientific accounts dismiss all supernatural contribution and exchange it with a series of natural orders called the laws of physics and non-tangible processes of the universe.

Most scientists don’t attach an intentional purpose to the universe. They leave that to philosophers who tend to argue with abstract thoughts that aren’t backed by hard evidence. Then, there are those who think the universe is simply a grand thought.

No matter who’s right and who’s wrong, there are a few facts you can personally bank on. One is that you exist in a physical form and use consciousness to be self-aware. That includes knowing you have a place in the universe, a purpose for being here and there’s a meaning to your life.

As said, this isn’t a religious paper. Religion can be a matter of faith but, then, so can science. The difference is that science relies on direct observation, proven experiments and the ability to replicate results. Science also depends on building hypothesizes, turning them into theories and then certifying them as facts.

No particular physicist claims sole authorship of the Big Bang Theory. Currently, the Big Bang Theory is the leading account for the universe’s origin, and it’s generally accepted throughout the scientific community as being the best explanation—so far—of where your structural matter originated. It goes something like this.

In the early 1900s, an astronomer named Edwin Hubble (the space telescope guy) was busy measuring galactic light and came upon his profound realization that the observable universe was expanding. Not only was the universe growing, Hubble exclaimed, but it was also accelerating its expansion rate. That led to a logical conclusion that the universe must have started in a singular place and at a specific time.

Some of science’s brightest folks worked on mathematical extrapolations and built the theory postulating that all matter and energy in today’s observable universe must have been once compressed in a singularity that exploded. That big bang started the time clock, created space, released energy and formed matter. It’s been growing ever since and, along the journey, you were created as an interconnected part.

This sounds like a pretty big undertaking. It also sounds pretty far out to think everything in the known universe was stuck in the space smaller than an atom where it was exceedingly hot and heavy. Well, guys like Einstein and Steven Hawking accepted the Big Bang Theory as fact, although Einstein famously quipped, “God knows where that came from.”

Without any other scientific direction to go on, what you see in the universe got started from a single point and is enormously here in its present form and place. The best-educated guesses place the universe’s age at about 13.77 billion years, give or take a few hundred thousand. This rough age-estimate comes from measuring Cepheid Variable Pulsating Stars (CVPS) with the Hubble Space Telescope which has proven to be quite useful once NASA got its foggy lens fixed.

The size of the observable macro, or outer, universe is impressive. Current measurements find the most distant visible electromagnetic radiation to be 46 billion light-years from Earth. That’s in every direction where the radio telescopes pick up the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) signal. Astronomers believe the CBR is a leftover mess occurring about 300,000 years after the Big Bang. If the true universal distance radius is 46 billion light-years, then the entire trip across occupied space is around 92 billion light-years in diameter.

That is a massive distance. It’s gigantic, humongous and colossal. Light, which is electromagnetic radiation, travels at 186,000 miles per second or 300,000 kilometers per second. That means that in one year a light particle can travel 5.88 trillion miles or 9.5 trillion kilometers. Multiply that by 92 billion and you’ll see that it’s a long, long way across the visible universe.

That’s just the macro universe that astronomers can see with current technology. Most scientists agree they’ve only explored something like four to five percent of the visible universe, and there’s far more out there than known today. This is an ongoing search with exciting discoveries emerging all the time.

To get a feel of where your physical place is in the macro universe is, you’re on the surface of a planet called Earth. Your home base is 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers from the sun which is a common-type star. It takes eight minutes for light to leave the sun and meet your eyes. To put this distance in perspective, a light particle can circle the Earth seven and a half times in one second.

The solar system extends a long way out. Pluto, which has returned its classification into the planet family, is seven hours distant from the sun via light speed. Going further, your planetary arrangement orbiting the sun is in one part of your home galaxy called the Milky Way. The sun is approximately 30,000 light-years from the big black hole at the Milky Way’s center, and you’re actually closer to the nearest independent galaxy than you are to the Milky Way’s core.

No one knows how many stars there are in the Milky Way. It’s a countless number. The current consensus is there may be a trillion stars in your home galaxy. Some astronomers feel there could be a trillion or more galaxies in the visible universe.

The Milky Way is part of a galactic bunch called the Local Group. These 54 assorted-shape star arrangements form part of a larger galactic collection known as the Virgo Supercluster. This is a big, big crowd but nowhere near what’s really going on out there.

Recent astronomical observations confirmed that beyond the Virgo Supercluster lies a monster called “Laniakea” which is Hawaiian for “Immeasurable Heaven”. This stupendous structure sits in a part of space called the “Zone of Avoidance” where the clouds of dust and gas are so thick that visible light is impossible to perceive. Astonishingly, Laniakea and the Virgo Supercluster are being pulled together across space and time by a behemoth force nicely titled the “Great Attractor”. No one knows what that force field is, but it’s powerful.

As you lay on the Earth’s surface and gaze at the starry sky, you’re not seeing reality. You’re only seeing light that left its emission point a long time ago. If you spot Andromeda, the only independent galaxy visible with your naked eye, you’re seeing that structure as it was two million years ago. For all you know, Andromeda may no longer exist.

The universe can play a lot of tricks on an observer. But one thing the universe never does is change its basic operating rules. Space, time, energy and matter follow strict laws that apply everywhere throughout the universe. Whether you’re on Earth, in Andromeda or around Laniakea, all fundamental forces behave the same way.

There are four fundamental forces in the entire universe—both in the macro and micro worlds. Those are electromagnetism, gravity, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. Space, time, energy and matter all adhere to these four forces from which many physicists have tried to find a common denominator to frame the Grand Unified Theory (GUT).

So far, no luck. Einstein spent the second half of his life working on a unified theory. His intuition told him unification lay in an infinite pool of information which is the non-visible and non-tangible factor that gives space, time, energy and matter its direction. This information or intelligence principle certainly seems to be real, and it’s captured in the acronym STEMI for Space, Time, Energy, Matter and Information or intelligence. It might also be universal consciousness.

Information permeates the entire universe. It somehow laid down the four forces emerging from the Big Bang and then made other rules or laws of physics which carried throughout the entire regions of reality. However, what the rules say about operating the outward cosmos are not exactly the same rules as those governing sub-atomics.

What directs your existence in the macro world adheres to classical or Newtonian physics. Down in the microcosm realm, though, your matter and energy have different masters. The wee parts of you behave according to quantum physics which are somehow interconnected back into classic physics and STEMI.

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