..续本文上一页e man who carried the hemp, his family was not happy with him at all! Why don”t we change our views, our ideas, when we see something better

　　 The reason we don”t do that is because of attachment. This is my view. We are comfortable with the old views, even though we know they are wrong. We don”t really want to change. Sometimes our self image is bound up with those views. Like the scientist who is bound up with his achievements, bound up with what he”s seen so far, he or she resists new ideas.

　　This is the problem called dogmatism. Sometimes when I talk about levitation, people say levitation doesn”t exist, it”s just myth. Wait until you see someone levitate! If you saw someone levitate, if the three monks here rose up about two or three feet, wouldn”t that be challenging

　　Sorry, we can”t do that in public. It”s against our rules. One of the reasons we can”t demonstrate psychic powers in front of people is that if we did, someone would probably record it on a video camera and send it to a television channel. Then everybody, even from overseas, would come to Perth. Not to listen to the Dhamma, not to hear about Buddhism, but just to see the monks do their tricks. Then we would be pressured into giving demonstrations all the time. It would be like a circus, not a temple. The point is that monks are not here to demonstrate tricks.

　　Even if a monk did perform a miracle, many people would say: "This is just a trick. It”s done with special effects. They are not really levitating". If you don”t want to believe it, you won”t. This is the problem with dogmatism. What you don”t want to see, you do not see. When you don”t want to believe it, you go into denial. This is why I say that many scientists are in denial about the nature of the mind.

　　The Boy with No Brain

　　This is a well known case that throws a challenge to modern science. It”s the case of Professor John Lorber and the student with no brain.[1] Professor Lorber was a neurologist at Sheffield University who held a research chair in paediatrics. He did a lot of research on hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. The student”s physician at the university noticed that the youth had a slightly larger than normal head, and so referred him to Professor Lorber, simply out of interest. When they did a brain scan on the student they saw that his cranium was filled mainly with cerebrospinal fluid. The student had an IQ of 126, had gained a first-class honours degree in mathematics, and was socially completely normal. And yet the boy had virtually no brain. This is not just a fabrication; research has found other people with no brains. During the first world war, when there was such carnage in the trenches of Europe. Soldiers had their skulls literally blown apart by bullets and shrapnel. It is said that the doctors found that some of the shattered heads of those corpses were empty. There was no brain. The evidence of those doctors was put aside as being too difficult to understand. But Professor Lorber went forward with his findings, and published them, to the great disturbance of the scientific community. Billions of dollars are going into research on the brain. Current views hold that imbalances in the brain are causing your depressions, your lack of intelligence, or your emotional problems. And yet here is evidence that shows you don”t need much of a brain to have an excellent mind.

　　A doctor friend in Sydney discussed this case with me once. He said he”d seen those CT scans, and confirmed that the case was well known in the medical community. He explained that that boy only had what was called a reptilian brain stem. Usually, any baby born with just a reptilian brain stem, without the cortex and the other stuff, will usually die straight away or within a few days after birth. A reptilia…

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