It's not so much trying to claim that the Earth is like a human brain, it's more that the Earth has become a general living creature, not just a brain....
Me explaining a eastern view to Christians
Vedic, Brahman, Hindu teaching were originally Buddhist teachings, taught by previous Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
The conflicting pantheisms, developed from a corruption of what had once been reductionistic like Buddhism, but as time passed, had became numerous competing ideologies, vying for political and social power, when Gods and gods, were adopted by tribes and clans all praying for survival and dominance.
Misunderstood dogma, became enmeshed in the social strata and evolved into a fixed caste system, where you were born, fated into a particular station in life and could only progress very slowly. The real teachings designed to remove sufferings, had become corrupted and became the cause for endless suffering. The allegories became myths that were believed to be real so the meaning of the allegory was lost.
It's like the game "telephone," where a message passed from person to person, becomes scrambled. Communicating the experiential enlightenment, gets lost as it is passed on from person to person, through different groups of believers in different lands in different times, with different dialects and languages. The recipe and composition of the Soma, the food of the gods becomes lost and Only the Brahman Priests and Kings could decide who could take the Soma. The same can be seen with the Pharaohs of Egypt. Priests and Kings became divine.
The basic teachings were often told allegorically. Naming mythical beings and gods was an expedients like telling children stories. The stars and planetary bodies in the sky, were also part of the web of reality and their movements tracked, creating mythology.
In the source teachings, beings were born into states, ranging from devils, demons and creatures/people in the eight cold or eight hot hells, creatures/people of little fortune, only concerned with hunger and unquenchable desire, manifestations of animality/brute states and anger. These were the four lower life states created by the worse kind of karma/cause and effect. These states all had sanskrit names. Beings in those life states predominantly were actually the creatures all around us in the insect and animal realms, sea creatures, birds, reptiles, mammals all living in perpetual suffering and strife. Trapped on the wheel of birth and death. Beings were responsible for their bad causes and the effects of these terrible life states.
As they would progress, they could become human, but still have the four lower states inherent and they could fall back down. With more spiritual progress one could be born in a Heaven as a deva, angel, or as a god, but still have not attained immortality or salvation and have a much longer but still limited lifespan and still subject to transient, temporary, happiness and regression to lower states they share.
The lower four states combined with humanity and heavenly beings made up the six lower life states, symbolized by these mythological creatures, beings and gods. The more primitive pantheons stopped there with the six life states as the totality of hell and heaven.
The Buddha also later named as an Avatar of Hinduism, taught 4 higher life states, starting with:
1. Arhat, the seventh life state, a person still learning, but much higher then beings in the 6 lower states. They had attained a realization of the ultimate emptiness of transient phenomena.
2. The self-realized Prateyeka Buddhas very intellectually inclined, who could see the theoretical underpinnings of Buddhahood. These two higher life states, called the two vehicles, could still regress if they become self-satisfied or think they have reached the highest state.
3. The ninth life state is the Bodhisattva, life state who in their hearts and minds, vow to take up the mission of being reborn, again on the Wheel of Birth and Death and endure the resulting suffering, in order to spread the law of the Buddha. In this state, one can achieve a state of non-retrogression.
4. The tenth life state is life state of Buddha.
All ten life states interpenetrate and mutually possess all ten, the original Holographic universe/mind . A Buddha
karma social schisms centered around a particular Vedic God vs. other particular Vedic God(s), or off-shoots, for political reasons. Here, the real meaning of these Gods, became lost and the formation of
The prehistoric sages spawned Vedic religion which spawned, Sumerian religion, Judaism, Egyptian religion and Zoroastrianism and later Christianity and others.
Schisms break apart groups of people, yet if you strip away the mythology, there is the same essence of the practice of meditation and prayer. This was the attempt to fuse Subjective wisdom to Objective reality.
At the root, there were the teachings of the sages or previous Buddhas. The Bodhi mind was originally a teaching of the great Vedic sages, but as time went on they became corrupted.
The teachings in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, clarified the original teachings again and the Avatars of Hinduism were God-Men born on earth to save beings from suffering and taught an ultimate personality of God or Bodhi.
A true sage, has an awakening and tries to communucate to others how they can also wake up. But not all people have the same religious capacity at the same time and they must take the teachings on faith because they are not as able to practice diligently and have a weak power of practice. Faith is an entry point. The common person is encouraged to have faith. Without strong faith and practice, no one could endure the taking of the Soma and gain enlightenment.
In the times of various "Wheel Rolling Kings," before and after the Buddha, it was politically expedient to try to unite sects and religions, so to strengthen empires and control people politically for the sake of peace and harmony in the empire. Sometimes the King would be elevated to God-like status.
The Buddha, also later called a Avatar of Hinduism, came along and taught to return to the source through correct practice. By his day the practices had become twisted again, into animal sacrifices, sex rituals, endless hymns to nature to save them, externally directed and politically, an all powerful Vedic Priesthood-the highest caste, maintained control over the people.
So the Buddha, like Jesus, later, remonstrated with these confused versions of the establishment sects that oppressed groups of people and urged a return to the correct practice and the correct attitude of compassion.
He taught equality, that each person possesses Buddha nature and can attain Buddhahood if they can overcome their base animal natures and transient desires and elevate their life states. Jesus too taught that God was within each person equally. This awakening, was not an intellectual thing but was experiential and rare.
The foundation of the pantheons of Hinduism and Buddhism was the exposition of life states. All those beings represented momentary life states and predominant life states, that operate by cause and effect (karma). Buddha taught dependent origination and re-explained the meaning of the Hindu Gods, as allegorical ways to explain reality and the changing life states within a person, and these Gods were not special beings in a literal way.
The truth beyond distinction was often told like children's stories to the suffering masses who passed the teachings down in confused ways.
How this occurs is amazing. Whatever people worship, becomes karmically imprinted in the Akasa (space, ether, inherency, depths of mind ) and when a meditating Soma drinker, entered these cosmic records, they could see snap shots of the whole history of consciousness, time and space. In Buddhism this was called the eighth consciousness, the storehouse, Alaya consciousness, but was not synonymous with Buddhahood, although some people mistakenly think they have seen ultimate reality.