The current state of neuroscience poses an intriguing paradox. Lavishly funded and immensely productive-generating thousands of studies published in its learned journals every year- its sophisticated scanning studies with their brightly colored images of the brain ’lighting up’ when thinking, memorizing and perceiving the world have caught the public’s imagination. But there is growing skepticism about its claims to have identified those parts of the brain involved in the higher mental functions of wisdom, love and morality. This analysis of its most recent findings confirm it has indeed profoundly changed our understanding of the relationship between the physical brain and the diverse attributes of the human mind, but in ways quite contrary to those anticipated- to reveal the five cardinal mysteries of subjective experience, memory, free will, the powers of reason and imagination and the sense of ‘self’ that provides profound insights into the exceptionality of the human experience.