In a study without compromise, we can observe some functions of the mind that direct our life:

1. The conscience

Neurologically we can understand the conscious as a property that allows us to recognize and interact with our internal, mental and physical world and with the environment that surrounds us.

The conscious presupposes a state of alertness. It is closely related to attention. Being aware means paying attention, being more or less attentive, in a state of alertness.

To be conscious has a vertical dimension linked to a greater or lesser responsiveness. In a normal situation we are fully awake, but its loss leads to degrees of progressive impairment: first, drowsiness, then numbness, and later, the state of coma.

2 - Can I share my conscience?

You can share with me my attention when we watch a movie together on TV, or my memory when we comment on the holiday party at our company. But I can't share my conscience with you.

It is full of thoughts that flow without interruption. It synthesizes and expresses my personality. Without it I don't know who I am. It deals with perceptions that it creates, reflecting them in my emotions. It is a subjective experience, only mine, although you can assess my state of consciousness.

Other times it happens that a patient – who has suffered a stroke - is awake, but we do not have access to the content of his conscious. It is called the vegetative state, as if the patient does not have a mind to communicate.

There are already very interesting experiences by evaluating the brain of these patients using functional brain resonance.

The MRI scan registers changes in the brain when they hear a call from their mother, thus suggesting a certain degree of affective perception

3 - Altered states of the conscious

Certain pathological situations, such as epilepsy of the temporal lobe and psychoses, can cause an alteration in which the patient seems to experience another reality. There is a disconnection with the environment. Thought is delusional, it has distorted views, and a disconnected speech. There is a loss of time and a spatial disorientation.

They are usually short-lived episodes and the patient has to be restrained from being hurt. He behaves by experiencing a situation that for us is unreal and in a strange environment, but for him it is where his conscience is located.

4 - Expansion of the conscious

The conscious also has a horizontal dimension. When meditating it can withdraw itself by being centered on a single thought. In the opposite direction, it can expand, enabling the evaluation of near or distant external environments.

Expansion occurs whether provoked or spontaneous in the following situations:

• In hypnotic induction

• In parapsychology experiments

• In the mediumistic somnambulistic trance phenomena

• In out-of-body experiences

• In lucid dreaming.

These are facts that abundantly prove that the conscious can transit outside the brain.

5 - Subconscious

While the conscious deals with the reality that presents itself in the present, most of our mental life is based on our past experiences that accumulate in the subconscious. Our mind moves continuously between the conscious and the subconscious, simultaneously and successively.

I'm talking to a friend about a certain subject, it could be about the landscapes of the waterfalls of the State of Minas Gerais. As we talk, watching the reactions of the friends around me, I realize that I recalled the noise of the waterfall on the Araguari river, which is near Uberlandia, where my daughter Katia lives and who recently became the grandmother of the most beautiful little girl in the world: Liz.

All of that content came from my subconscious where it was stored.

6 – The unconscious

Mistakenly called the basement of the mind, it is where our desires are that the conscience does not want them to be revealed.

It gathers the energy that one day will pour out due to the buildup of unresolved conflicts. However, we can explore the unconscious with the perspective of registering the experiences of previous incarnations. Researchers have already collected large and reliable material in this area of the mind.

7 - The neurological unconscious

When we learn a task and acquire the competence to perform it, its motor scheme is stored. The nuclei of the base in the center of the brain play this role of autopilot performing tasks learned without much participation of the conscious.

This automatic unconscious allows us to accurately execute a work of art, a sonata on the piano, to type an entire book quickly and accurately.

Our visceral activity is all unconscious, but at some point it may come to be perceived consciously. A good example is breathing, totally unconscious, but a simple cough is enough to realize that it exists.

8 - The spiritual domain of the mind

Didactically we can consider that there are two mental environments: the material and the spiritual one. In reality, however, the two represent the spectrum of a continuum.

The mind lives the material world in the physical brain and remains in direct and uninterrupted contact with the spiritual dimension.

In any of the meetings we hold awake or asleep, we maintain direct communication with the Spirits who are in tune with us. The idea that we can be alone is a great illusion.

Affections and sympathies, rejections or mistrust are much more spiritual than physical. We have a much more spiritual experience with our mind than the physical conscious can allow us to suppose.

9 – The conscious and mediumship

This is one of the most extraordinary human phenomena: the possibility of merging the two consciences: that of the one embodied and that of the communicating Spirit.

As Kardec taught, this happens in the medium's brain.

For me, as a neurologist, I assume that this duplication is possible in the brain, because in it we have a voluntary communication pathway in the pyramidal system occupied by the medium and an automatic, extrapyramidal pathway in the nuclei of the base occupied by the disembodied.

Mediumship has an interesting clinical neighborhood with the phenomenon of multiple personalities, in which the conscious present themselves with two or three distinct behaviors.

10 – The conscience after death

I hereby make just two considerations to provoke a simpler study.

When disincarnating, one of the difficulties is to wake up to another situation in which mental functions are diversified.

The newly disincarnated still does not know how to deal with the thoughts, memories, needs, communication and the environment where he is located.

The second problem is the multiplicity of personalities with whom we have already passed in other incarnations; knowing how to deal with the mental pressure of each one is laborious.