11. Can Information Temporarily Reside in the Brain?

Information is formless and immaterial—it is not a physical entity. The brain is material dharma. How can these two merge? Consider: can a room temporarily retain a piece of news? Can events that have occurred be preserved for a short while within a room or space? Absolutely not. Similarly, the brain cannot retain any information whatsoever.

If the brain could store information, then by slicing apart the brain of a living or deceased person piece by piece, one should be able to locate this information, study it, and thus uncover all of a person’s secrets. In that case, no one in the world would have secrets, criminal investigations would be exceedingly easy, and there would be no unsolved cases spanning millennia, no wrongful convictions, and no mysteries beyond resolution. If a computer could store information, would disassembling it reveal that information? If a mobile phone could store information, would taking it apart allow one to find that information?

If information belonged to material dharma—composed of the Four Great Seeds—it could only reside within the Tathāgatagarbha, as the brain lacks the Four Great Seeds and cannot store information. Moreover, the brain’s capacity is insufficient for such storage. Therefore, information must reside within and originate from the Tathāgatagarbha. If information does not belong to material dharma and is not composed of the Four Greats, then it must exist as formless, immaterial seeds, which can only reside within the Tathāgatagarbha—the brain cannot store seeds. Footprints on walls or the ground belong to material dharma composed of the Four Greats; they are not information, and thus can naturally be seen by the eyes.