Brain can be understood on three levels. First, as an actual natural phenomenon. Second, as a raw perceptual (first-order) meta-object. And third, as second-order meta-representation or symbol on a map. But all those levels are, in essence, one. A fitting analogy could be computer software which is at all times just a particular state of the associated hardware (it would correspond to a simple first-order capable brain). Thus, you cannot separate brain-as-is from brain-as-perception and brain-as-symbol. They are one and the same thing.

Let's start with big bang (emergence of space and time). In a fraction of second afterward, data emerges (randomly seeded until a configuration has the capacity to stick, though this is a pure speculation as I know of no serious paper dealing with this stage, but I also didn't look particularly deep into the topic). Then, fundamental forces, or energy, come into existence from that seeded data, and finally, matter manifests in accordance with all already manifested phenomena. This is the stage from-subtle-to-coarse (and, IMO, the source of the common mistake of assuming that human mind rules over and generates matter).

The whole process slows down significantly. Universe goes for billions of years like this reconfiguring itself until life emerges and the evolution picks up pace again. At certain point, biological neural networks evolve and that also means that mind (or perception) becomes manifested. The neural networks then go ever more complex until they are capable of “symbolic states” or ideas (aka realizations). This is the stage from-coarse-to-subtle (and, IMO, the source of the common mistake of assuming that there is some God’s mind that is similar to the human one).

Again, each successive stage encapsulates all previous stages, i.e. there are no ideas without mind, no minds without living matter, etc. Take e.g. a stone, which is its own energy and data, that human mind renders into "stone-realizations." But it's all just one and the same thing – the gray matter hums in a way that mimics sensed stone-data-energy-matter, and so brain basically recreates the stone within itself but as a perception and, in the case of some species, also as a symbol.

I tried to allude to this equivalence and how these levels emerge from, interact, and influence each other in the previous articles Circle of Growth and Fractal Evolution.