When the self is not physical(form), but the self is formless soul ,which is present in the form of consciousness, then the question of brain cells does not arise. Only when one takes the physical apparatus as self, then this brain and mediation is reality. The body and the world are with in the mind. The mind is illusion, on the standpoint of its formless substance,which is consciousness. The truth is hidden within the illusion and it is without the illusion. When self is formless, then the body (brain) and the world are mere illusion. That is why the truth realization is possible only through perfect understanding and assimilation. The reasoning base has to be rectified from form to formless in order to unfold the mystery of the mind or illusion. When self is not physical it is erroneous to judge the truth on the base of physical self or waking or dream because it leads to intellectual speculations. Meditation and yoga are good for physical life but there are not the means to acquire Self-Knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana.
Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness
by :Alva Noë. Hill and Wang, 2009:-
Alva No, a University of California, Berkeley, philosopher and cognitive scientist, argues that after decades of concerted effort on the part of neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers "only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious ... has emerged unchallenged: we don't have a clue." The reason we have been unable to explain the neural basis of consciousness, he says, is that it does not take place in the brain. Consciousness is not something that happens inside us but something we achieve it is more like dancing than it is like the digestive process. To understand consciousness the fact that we think and feel and that a world shows up for us we need to look at a larger system of which the brain is only one element. Consciousness requires the joint operation of brain, body and world. "You are not your brain. The brain, rather, is part of what you are."
