This view maintains that every individual consciousness is a tiny fragment of the universal consciousness which holds all knowledge. In this view, the brain does not operate our consciousness at all, but instead acts as a ‘restricting valve’ to keep us from accessing all but a small and simple amount of experience and knowledge. And the reason it performs such a function is that to be made aware of everything there is to be aware of would be far too heavy for the simple human animal to bear. In short, it would kill us.
So let’s turn this theory to the search for the Holy Grail, and let’s remind ourselves that the meaning of the Holy Grail has never been known. It was first mentioned in a work by Chretien de Troyes in the 12th century in one of several Arthurian romances, but Chretien died before the work was complete and he never said what the Holy Grail actually was.
Mediaeval Christianity was quick to seize upon it and invent the notion that it was either the cup from which Jesus drank at the last supper, or a cup in which Joseph of Arimathea caught some of Jesus’s blood as he was dying in the cross. Such speculation was readily accepted and has been the received view ever since.
Now let’s make another big leap to Malory’s collection of the Arthurian romances in his book Le Morte D’Arthur. According to that source, several knights undertook the quest for the Grail, and as I said in post some year ago there was:
Lancelot, who searched for the Grail but didn’t find it, Perceval, who saw the Grail but didn’t recognise it, and Galahad, who found the Grail, recognised its significance, and then died almost immediately from a surfeit of ecstasy?
I don’t know whether this story of the three knights was taken from Chretien’s original or whether it was added by Mallory, but I’m now tempted to wonder whether somebody knew the true nature of the relationship between the brain and consciousness, and that he also knew the true meaning of the Grail.
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