You may not think of the brain as "technology." But it is, in the purest sense of the word.

What is technology, after all, but tools? As Archimedes, inventor of the principle of leverage said, "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world!"

And while we may not use our brains the way we use a rake or a telephone, there is no arguing the fact that it is the mightiest tool in our shed. Without it, nothing works.

Consider what the human brain is, in the context of all nature. It is the only instance we know of in the universe of atoms and molecules organizing themselves to think and speak.

It is breathtaking: chemistry that can say the word chemistry, tissue that is conscious, self-diagnosing and self-correcting.

More to the point: what if the brain is not our tool, but nature's tool? Not our technology, but nature's? That human mentality is nature's way of thinking about itself?

It is as if the world, a billion years ago, was lonely for its own soul -- and so created us, to be it.

Oh, a supercomputer does some things faster. But it is, ultimately, an idiot. The brain uses symbols, sounds, and a hundred different logics to do its work. A machine is just stuff; but anatomy that spouts poetry -- well!

Which brings me to my concern. I found out four months ago I have a brain tumor. Not a bad one, but there is really no such thing as a good one. And while it is in the brain, it is not of the brain. It is not itself conscious. It is doing no miraculous loop-de-loops of imagination. Left to its own devices, it would grow and destroy my brain, and me along with it.

So I have been fighting back. Every day I meditate, centering myself inside my head. Every inhalation ushers life and healing into my form; every exhalation shakes away the dirt and sickness like a dusty rug.

And my brain, through me, is giving itself instructions: Surround the tumor. Corrode it. Destroy it. Absorb it. Shrink it.

It is a dizzying, powerful feeling. Your eyes are closed, and you feel each breath swim into your skull like a gust of healing medicine, then swim out again, flushing away the bad stuff.

Sometimes I feel a wave of chemical happiness that is quite extraordinary. I want to stand up and dance. Even if I'm in, like, the Department of Motor Vehicles.

It's not as dramatic as Carrie using her brain to telekinetically wreak havoc on her senior prom. But it amounts to the same thing: mind over matter.

A profound experiment was conducted several years ago, in which electrodes placed against a user's head generated enough impulse to move a cursor on a computer screen. People were providing data input with their minds -- an in almost the same way that the PC itself works, via electrical stimulus.

If I can move a cursor with my thoughts, what else can I do?

I picture tiny nanobots, at the cellular level, or even smaller, as small as the prana of the Indian yogis, swarming over that poor tumor -- my friends named it Boomer, after themselves -- and chomping into it like sugarbees at a blueberry pie-eating contest.

And they aren't subtle about it. They are smacking their lips lustily, and singing ionic sea chanties!

Sounds preposterous? Yes, but there are many, many, many, many documented (ooh!) cases of people using visualization techniques to successfully combat all sorts of illnesses. Miracle cures seem almost to be a matter of whether we want them or not.

I say almost because the magic doesn't always work. A woman in a new age cancer peer group swore she would "think" her uterine cancer into submission. Wanting, the harnessing of the brain to the will, was that powerful. When the cancer swamped her instead, people in the group asked her why she wanted to die.

I can't swear to you that it's working. But I've already had three MRI scans. Each time I go in, expecting the worst, and they load you in the cannon and the machine starts bouncing sounds off your head, creating images of what is inside with the reverberations.

And each time, the image has shown no growth. The tumor, which caused me to have a powerful stroke in January, is dead in the cranial water.

So I'm thinking of old Archimedes of Syracuse and the lever he called for that was as big as the world. All he needed was a place to stand -- a safe universe, from which to pry this one apart.

And I consider that the ultimate lever, the ultimate technology, is the crown of creation that is us.

Eureka, eh?