Emotions are enmeshed in the neural networks of reason.

We can be more or less conscious when you create grades of focus on a subject that is flowing in our stream of consciousness.

To me, body and mind are different aspects of specific biological processes.

Consciousness begins when brains acquire the power, the simple power I must add, of telling a story.

Emotion operates, very often when you think about how you react to the world, you know, something is happening to you, you're simply going along and you're being confronted by different things, not necessarily very important or significance for your ultimate life, but you are constantly reacting to the world.

Scott Fitzgerald said famously that "he who invented consciousness would have a lot to be blamed for." But he also forgot that without consciousness, he would have no access to true happiness or even the possibility of transcendence.

There's that effect that is very physical, very down there at the synaptic level, which really means microscopic cellular level, but also molecular level, because all of those structures are operating on an electrochemical basis and so the changes there are very important.