Gilbert Bates

The most important thing you will receive from reading this book is a deeper understanding of yourself, which is more important then learning about me.

My brain works the same as your brain, and also everybody else's on this earth.

learn how your own brain works and you will have a lot better understanding of why other people do what they do, including me.

This book is different from most other books on the human brain, including those from psychology, psychiatry and self help, because it understands the brain from three separate levels of functioning.

These levels are the thinking (cortex), feeling (limbic), and sensations (brainstem).

While the current paradigm suggests the cortex is the most intelligent, powerful and influential part of the brain, this book shows how the brainstem, acting through sensations, is the driving force behind the human condition.

Our collective misunderstanding of this very influential part of the human brain is leading the human species down a shaky and self-destructive path.

Things like Love, Sex and Mental Health are all explained better when we understand that they are generated from the sensations in the brainstem. Central to this understanding is that the brainstem has a very real intelligence of its own - one that cannot be understood from a cortical or thinking perspective.

The main thing you need to know about me is that I did not write this book from a theoretical and intellectual perspective. I wrote it from my first hand experiences of all three levels of brain functioning.

To illustrate my experience I use the analogy of a three story house.The brainstem is represented by the basement, the limbic system by the living rooms, and the cortex by the penthouse.

Our present understanding of Love, Sex and Mental Health is almost purely from a cortical (penthouse) viewpoint.

My journey through Primal Therapy took me down into my living rooms, where I got to experience my full feeling states, and then continued into the basement where I got to experience the full force of my sensations.

Experiencing my sensations (basement) has changed my view of the human condition in dramatic ways. it will have the same effect on anybody who undertakes this inner adventure, because our brains all work the same, especially so at the level of sensations.

I can say with certainty that the human species will not fully understood Love, will forever be burdened by sexual perversions, and will not even come close to understanding mental disorders - their causes and cures - until we understand that their powerful forces are generated in the basement of our minds.

We all need to leave our comfortable penthouses and explore our living rooms and basements.

This book is about such a journey, and describes how accessing the sensations in the human brainstem has the capacity to change so many things that blight the human condition.