Nowhere Is It Not It is apparently body-wisdom that the Hippocratic Writings alluded to, two millennia ago, in stating that “there is a measure of conscious thought throughout the body.” Porphyry (c. 250 A.D.) was more specific, speaking of the intelligible (“which can not be enclosed in any place”— including the body): “The intelligible, therefore, is not imprisoned within the body; it spreads in all the body’s parts, it penetrates them, it goes through them, and could not be enclosed in any place.”
This is an “intelligence” which goes beyond what we think of in connection with human consciousness. It is the essential intelligence which permits the brain to operate, whether or not “consciousness” is present. Thus noted Larry Dossey, M.D.: “If we take consciousness seriously, we are faced with the conundrum that nobody has succeeded in registering its existence in an experiment. That is to say, the human brain has been much explored, and a great deal of its workings understood; but so far it has not been experimentally demonstrated that consciousness is needed as an additional component in the operation of the brain.”
It is this “beyond the body” essence that he describes as a “nonlocal,” or unitary, “mind”: “The nonlocal view suggests that the mind cannot be limited to specific points in space (brains or bodies)
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