Analysis of the soul.

[MANICHAEAN]

Some musings on the concept of the soul of Man.

Part 1:

1. Man we are told is composed of two elements: body and soul.

• The belief in the body is with us every day and hard to dispute, unless all our supposed senses are some kind of grand illusion.

• You could argue the non-existence of the soul on the grounds of logic and tangible proof in the mortal sense; although you could alternatively argue the existence of the soul using the “cause and effect” theory i.e if there is an effect for every cause according to the laws of physics, there must have been an original cause? The latter perhaps is more directly linked with explaining the existence of a God as opposed to a soul.

• I personally believe that there is a spiritual dimension, perhaps attuned to man’s imaginative or intuitive facilities that sense both a God and a soul.

2. One of the two elements is a material element, the other a spiritual one.

3. They are not two independent elements, but incomplete in needing each other to form a human person.

4. The two elements are made in the image and likeness of God.

• Presumably the body likeness has been a gradual evolvement over the ages. This would appear to make a mockery of many artistic interpretations.

• The image and likeness of the soul to God is difficult to grasp in any mortal sense, which is perhaps the whole point and intention?

[YesNo]

Earlier this morning it shocked me to think that both matter and spirit seemed beyond-my-reach transcendent. Matter went off to quantum reality that I could no longer objectify and my subjectivity got lost in whatever got this universe started.

And then it all popped back into place.

[MANICHAEAN]

A bit like a dislocated shoulder?

[YesNo]

Thankfully it didn't last long.

More specifically the view of body and soul you are taking seems dualistic. I'll admit it sort of looks that way. Who knows? In any case, I'm looking forward to read Part 2.

[Tammuz]

• You could argue the non-existence of the soul on the grounds of logic and tangible proof in the mortal sense; although you could alternatively argue the existence of the soul using the “cause and effect” theory i.e if there is an effect for every cause according to the laws of physics, there must have been an original cause?

The Materialists say that consciousness and its contents are mere effects of neural activity which is therefore the primal ontological reality and consciousness only a secondary one which has no reality in itself. Closely examined, this is an odd view of things.

Let us take musical phenomena as an analogy: according to the materialistic view, the sounds of music which enchant the listener, that is, the sounds which he/she actually HEARS, do not really exist - what exists is only the vibrations of the instruments, of the air molecules and of the tympanum, as well as the neuronal reactions in the listener´s brain. So the materialist denies the existence or reality of everything what cannot be measured by physical equipment. He denies the reality of music insofar as he raises the physical phenomena on the throne of absolute reality while that what actually matters (the hearable sounds) is degraded to mere phantoms.

So the materialists say: "The psychic exists only insofar as it is effected by physical activities". However, this argument is most reductionistic and not well considered. The point is that the transition from physical to psychic is a black-box within that argumentation. An argumentative ´black box´ is a premise that remains unproven and often unexpressed but is crucial for the thesis. As to the given issue, the materialist fails to prove or at least make plausible any explanation for the transition from material events to psychic events, or in other words, from matter to consciousness. Without that explanation, the materialistic thesis collapses.

One alternative view says that consciousness is not a mere function of matter but has an existence and reality on its own. In this view, it is completely implausible to assert that consciousness can howsoever arise out of matter. It can connect to material processes, yes, but it cannot grow out of them like a flower grows out of the ground. Anyway, the mode of connection is totally unclear. Probably we have to think of two different levels of ´materiality´ that can somehow get into contact. In Indian philosophy (e.g. Vedanta), psychic phenomena are thought to be material in a very subtle manner, let us say, billions of billions times more subtle than physical matter. In Vedanta, there are three ´bodies´ of a person: Gross Body (Sthula Sharira), Subtle Body (Sukshma Sharira) and Causal Body (Karana Sharira). The first is that sort of matter to which the materialists refer, the second is the psychic and the third is that part of a person which in most cases unconsciously participates in the cosmic spirit.

The most important argument against the materialistic view is the Qualia argument (see the Wiki article linked at the end of my article) as indicated above in the music example. To see the color Red is quite another thing than to measure the frequencies of Red. Materialists however don´t really perceive the difference. Red as a color is an experience of awareness that has nothing to do with the physically correlated light frequencies. When materialists say that the former completely stems from the latter, they commit a gross error of thought by forgetting or ignoring the´black box´ of transition, as pointed out above.


(...) there must have been an original cause? The latter perhaps is more directly linked with explaining the existence of a God as opposed to a soul.


The idea of an ´original cause´ in the sense of the ´first unmoved mover´ of Aristotle or the Creator god of monotheism is not really logic because such a thing cannot be observed in nature. Every physical object origins in other physical objects resp. develops through interaction between such objects. Such a thing like a ´first cause´ is purely abstract, not empirical. Even in the first Genesis chapter of the OT Elohim does not create everything out of nothing. Verse 1,2 shows that water and earth are supposed to be pre-existent. The ´pre-existence´ interpretation of the beginning of Gen 1 has gained acceptance during the last decades. The state of the universe described in verse 1,2 is pre-existent, that is, preceding the afterwards related creational process. Verse 1,1 is supposed to be a summary or something like a headline of the events in chapter 1. Verse 1,2 describes the pre-existent state of the universe without giving a hint on whether this state had any origin or was given since forever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

[desiresjab]

Some musings on the concept of the soul of Man.

Part 1:

1. Man we are told is composed of two elements: body and soul.

• The belief in the body is with us every day and hard to dispute, unless all our supposed senses are some kind of grand illusion.

• You could argue the non-existence of the soul on the grounds of logic and tangible proof in the mortal sense; although you could alternatively argue the existence of the soul using the “cause and effect” theory i.e if there is an effect for every cause according to the laws of physics, there must have been an original cause? The latter perhaps is more directly linked with explaining the existence of a God as opposed to a soul.

• I personally believe that there is a spiritual dimension, perhaps attuned to man’s imaginative or intuitive facilities that sense both a God and a soul.

2. One of the two elements is a material element, the other a spiritual one.

3. They are not two independent elements, but incomplete in needing each other to form a human person.

4. The two elements are made in the image and likeness of God.

• Presumably the body likeness has been a gradual evolvement over the ages. This would appear to make a mockery of many artistic interpretations.

• The image and likeness of the soul to God is difficult to grasp in any mortal sense, which is perhaps the whole point and intention?

Good post. In algebra there is a name for the soul--x. How we hang together is a great mystery I ponder every day. Progress is quite slow. We think a person talking to himself on the street while retracing small steps and peeing himself has not hung together as well as ourselves, but there is no proof that is correct. If there is life after death we could find ourselves in a state we would judge closer to his than our own. Madmen may have unwittingly held a key forever. Great progress may be had when we are finally able to penetrate the consciousnesses of those we institutionalize because they have not hung together well. In other words, studying the extremes would be likely to have benefit again for science. Average human psyches are perhaps only interesting for their stability in hanging together. More interesting phenomena might be obscured by this very stability.

I think our words and categories are pretty limiting, but they are what we have to try and understand with. A person meditating does not need words but a person communicating does.

* * * * *

I do not know your religious persuasion, but I see that you incorporate some Judaic-Christian terminology in your philosophy when you like something. I am historically a Christian, though I do not practice beyond an occasional prayer. Armchair philosphers like myself can wax ecstatic discussing what it means to be made in God's image. That idea is one of the most captivating in all literature and seems to me like the greatest single image constructed by mankind.

What is the relationship between soul and mind. These little categories seem quite ueseless, don't they? I could replace soul with spirit, mind with consciousness. Poetry often seems to edge closer.

* * * * *

Obviously, people cannot hang together very long. They are semi-stable in their little sliver of time, then every single one dies. About three people per second die across the planet, roughly averaged. One of those seconds is going to be your second, and one will be mine. How do we like it? How do we like the dying off of everyone we loved? All those deaths certainly point the way.

* * * * *

Fondest of all afterlife dreams is where the individual consciousness hangs together enough for reunions with loved ones. Suppose for a moment it is all malarkey--all our myths and religions concerning afterlife and God. There is no God, there is no afterlife. That still does not rule out the possibility that we will construct such a permanent "object," in the future. Extremely advanced computers might do this for us. Who are we to say what constitutes being alive? For what exactly is this existence we feel? How real are we, and how unreal are we, and what is the difference? No one can answer that in a way that gains everyone's confidence. Behind it all, if we could see, we might have to admit that, yes, by golly, we are artifical after all. Personally, I believe there is a pretty fair chance that we are artificial constructions, and that our universe is, too. If you make something, it qualifies as artifice. If we were created by God...

Does that mean we are as real as God? Was Pinocchio as real as his maker, or was Pinocchio merely an artificial creation of Geppetto?

* * * * *

If there is a God, I believe that God is more real than we are, and that what is promised is a reality more like the one of God.

[MANICHAEAN]

Dear YesNo, Tammuz, desiresjab

Thanks for the feedback. Extremely interesting material there.

Best regards
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

Part 2:

1. The soul can exist apart from the body after death. Because the soul is spiritual, it is immortal.

2. But there is an incompleteness in this until reunited with the body at the end of the world i.e. our salvation and resurrection.

I would hopefully look forward to being reunited with my past body of 21 years old, but am quite prepared to accept the mental state of my 73 years !!

3. It is the condition of our soul at the end of mortal life that determines our eternal lot.

• It raises the existence of a transitional test during our mortal coil.

• Another interpretation that I came across, (A Jesuit I believe, teaching Grahame Greene) is that it’s not a question of what God forbids, but what he tolerates. This would be more in line with a forgiving God dealing with struggling mortals.

[YesNo]

The Materialists say that consciousness and its contents are mere effects of neural activity which is therefore the primal ontological reality and consciousness only a secondary one which has no reality in itself. Closely examined, this is an odd view of things.

Let us take musical phenomena as an analogy: according to the materialistic view, the sounds of music which enchant the listener, that is, the sounds which he/she actually HEARS, do not really exist - what exists is only the vibrations of the instruments, of the air molecules and of the tympanum, as well as the neuronal reactions in the listener´s brain. So the materialist denies the existence or reality of everything what cannot be measured by physical equipment. He denies the reality of music insofar as he raises the physical phenomena on the throne of absolute reality while that what actually matters (the hearable sounds) is degraded to mere phantoms.

So the materialists say: "The psychic exists only insofar as it is effected by physical activities". However, this argument is most reductionistic and not well considered. The point is that the transition from physical to psychic is a black-box within that argumentation. An argumentative ´black box´ is a premise that remains unproven and often unexpressed but is crucial for the thesis. As to the given issue, the materialist fails to prove or at least make plausible any explanation for the transition from material events to psychic events, or in other words, from matter to consciousness. Without that explanation, the materialistic thesis collapses.

One alternative view says that consciousness is not a mere function of matter but has an existence and reality on its own. In this view, it is completely implausible to assert that consciousness can howsoever arise out of matter. It can connect to material processes, yes, but it cannot grow out of them like a flower grows out of the ground. Anyway, the mode of connection is totally unclear. Probably we have to think of two different levels of ´materiality´ that can somehow get into contact. In Indian philosophy (e.g. Vedanta), psychic phenomena are thought to be material in a very subtle manner, let us say, billions of billions times more subtle than physical matter. In Vedanta, there are three ´bodies´ of a person: Gross Body (Sthula Sharira), Subtle Body (Sukshma Sharira) and Causal Body (Karana Sharira). The first is that sort of matter to which the materialists refer, the second is the psychic and the third is that part of a person which in most cases unconsciously participates in the cosmic spirit.

The most important argument against the materialistic view is the Qualia argument (see the Wiki article linked at the end of my article) as indicated above in the music example. To see the color Red is quite another thing than to measure the frequencies of Red. Materialists however don´t really perceive the difference. Red as a color is an experience of awareness that has nothing to do with the physically correlated light frequencies. When materialists say that the former completely stems from the latter, they commit a gross error of thought by forgetting or ignoring the´black box´ of transition, as pointed out above.

I agree with all of this. I also like the "black box" metaphor. Black boxes are assumptions hiding crucial parts of the argument.

Qualia are important. If one is arguing whether a deterministic-random (algorithmic) robot can be conscious assuming it passes some Turing test convincing observers that it is human, qualia can make one question whether fooling people is an adequate test of consciousness. There is still that underlying deterministic-random program running that is problematic. Some say that deterministic model implies that we are also deterministic-random machines. Others claim that the program's very existence implies that no real choice can be made by the robot and so the robot, as a robot, is not conscious.

A similar Turing test can be set up for quantum phenomenon with this criterium: If a quantum particle can be observed to make a choice that cannot be explained by any hidden variables, then the quantum particle has enough consciousness to make that choice. That there exists no hidden variables, no underlying program, that would explain why a photon, say, would go through a window rather than reflect, one can say that this quantum Turing test was passed in the early 20th century.

Given this, the indeterminacy measured by the probability waves of a quantum particle can be interpreted as saying quantum particles make choices. Hence they are conscious. The other interpretations of a quantum particle's wave indeterminacy either avoid looking at the problem (Copenhagen's "shut up and calculate") or they are attempts to come up with ways to turn the probabilistic model into a deterministic model (many worlds and Bohm's pilot waves). All of these other interpretations have to find some way around the success of this test. They have to find something, like qualia does to the robot Turing test, to negate the success of this quantum Turing test.



The idea of an ´original cause´ in the sense of the ´first unmoved mover´ of Aristotle or the Creator god of monotheism is not really logic because such a thing cannot be observed in nature. Every physical object origins in other physical objects resp. develops through interaction between such objects. Such a thing like a ´first cause´ is purely abstract, not empirical. Even in the first Genesis chapter of the OT Elohim does not create everything out of nothing. Verse 1,2 shows that water and earth are supposed to be pre-existent. The ´pre-existence´ interpretation of the beginning of Gen 1 has gained acceptance during the last decades. The state of the universe described in verse 1,2 is pre-existent, that is, preceding the afterwards related creational process. Verse 1,1 is supposed to be a summary or something like a headline of the events in chapter 1. Verse 1,2 describes the pre-existent state of the universe without giving a hint on whether this state had any origin or was given since forever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Another way of looking at the impossibility of unconscious matter is to note that the universe had a beginning.

The Big Bang as a theory depends too much on Einstein's theory of gravitation which is probably false since dark matter cannot be found and black holes are of value only in the mathematical model. As an explanation of how the origin occurred, it is likely false, but that there was an origin is still true. Given that no unconscious matter comes from nothing and prior to the origin there was no unconscious matter this leads to the conclusion that after the universe began there is still no unconscious matter in the universe.

[Tammuz]

Qualia are important. If one is arguing whether a deterministic-random (algorithmic) robot can be conscious assuming it passes some Turing test convincing observers that it is human, qualia can make one question whether fooling people is an adequate test of consciousness. There is still that underlying deterministic-random program running that is problematic. Some say that deterministic model implies that we are also deterministic-random machines.

Yes, such materialistic mindgames are in a way very naive. The basic idea is that when a system gains a certain degree of complexity the result is the emergence of consciousness. This is in no way compatible with the fact of qualia in any form, e.g. pain feeling. A machine can be programmed to externally simulate such feelings by electronic cryings or wild-flashing bulbs, but how should it be possible that it really feels them the same way as a human or animal feels pains? Asserting this reminds me of the magical thinking of antiquity. See also John Searle´s argument:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room


A similar Turing test can be set up for quantum phenomenon with this criterium: If a quantum particle can be observed to make a choice that cannot be explained by any hidden variables, then the quantum particle has enough consciousness to make that choice. That there exists no hidden variables, no underlying program, that would explain why a photon, say, would go through a window rather than reflect, one can say that this quantum Turing test was passed in the early 20th century.

This might theoretically be true for a quantum particle (yet very questionable), but one cannot deduce from there that a machine consisting of billions of billions of billions of particles has an individual consciousness as well. One cannot add individual (hypothetical) carriers of consciousness in the hope that the additive result is a carrier of consciousness, too. This reminds me of Thomas Hobbes´ concept of ´Leviathan´, that is, the addition of many individual minds to a complex new entity named ´political state´ which shows properties which are different from those of its elements (the humans). However, this new entity has not gained any own consciousness, at least there is no indication for that. A similar argument in the philosophy of mind against materialism is the so-called ´China Brain´:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain


Given this, the indeterminacy measured by the probability waves of a quantum particle can be interpreted as saying quantum particles make choices. Hence they are conscious.

I do not see a compelling case for both conclusions, as to (1) that they make choices, and (2) that, therefore, they are conscious. The random character of the particles´ behavior does not necessarily mean that there is such a thing like will at work. Moreover, there might be causes which science is simply not able to detect. One should also consider that it is problematic to construct an analogy between human will and the hypothetical ´particle´ will as long as there is no absolute certainty about the ´free´ nature of man´s will. That this will is ´free´ is just an axiom. There is much to suggest that human consciousness has no influence on decision-making which might be completely determinated from the unconscious. This makes an analogy to particles problematic, since under that (hypothetical) condition particles should have an unconscious or subconscious, too. I do not deny this possibility, and this view is actually part of ancient Indian philosophical thinking, but it´s ironic that those materialists who champion a machine consciousness by arguing with quantum particle consciousness are in this respect unknowlingly going in bed with their philosophical antagonists, the Indian vedantists and modern theosophists.


The Big Bang as a theory depends too much on Einstein's theory of gravitation which is probably false since dark matter cannot be found and black holes are of value only in the mathematical model.

Since the Big Bang Theory is originally the idea of a Jesuit priest named Georges Lemaitre (and not of Chuck Lorre) it can naturally be suspected of being a transformation of Catholic ideas into scientific language. The main contra-arguments are (1) that there is a appearingly more plausible alternative view of things, that is, the theory of the oscillating universe, and (2) that a creatio ex nihilo implied by that theory is a quite anti-scientific concept.


As an explanation of how the origin occurred, it is likely false, but that there was an origin is still true. Given that no unconscious matter comes from nothing and prior to the origin there was no unconscious matter this leads to the conclusion that after the universe began there is still no unconscious matter in the universe.

At the moment I don´t have a clue about what you mean. Why is it still true that there was an origin (in the sense of creatio ex nihilo?)? Why should it be theoretically impossible that "after the universe began" (what is hypothetical and in my view wrong in an absolute sense) such a thing like ´unconscious matter´ could not originate howsoever?

[Freudian Monkey]

I view soul as a traveler playing a "Choose your own adventure" -game. After the first game is over, he moves on to another game. The traveler grows through the decisions he makes playing the game, and the ultimate meaning of the traveler's journey is the journey itself - the development he goes through. The ultimate end goal of the traveler's journey is a mystery - and in my opinion, it's irrelevant.

[YesNo]

Yes, such materialistic mindgames are in a way very naive. The basic idea is that when a system gains a certain degree of complexity the result is the emergence of consciousness. This is in no way compatible with the fact of qualia in any form, e.g. pain feeling. A machine can be programmed to externally simulate such feelings by electronic cryings or wild-flashing bulbs, but how should it be possible that it really feels them the same way as a human or animal feels pains? Asserting this reminds me of the magical thinking of antiquity. See also John Searle´s argument:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

I think we agree on the above. To make sure that is the case, I will define a "Turing test" to be a test whereby we can claim that something has some form of consciousness, not necessarily human consciousness. The "robot Turing test" is the original test Turing constructed for AI machines. Here is a start for why the robot Turing test needs to be replaced:

1) Qualia imply that a robot does not feel although the robot can be programmed to simulate feeling.

2) Searle's Chinese Room argument implies that a robot does not understand the words the robot is using.

3) Human beings conducting these tests are not able to even differentiate when they have a human subject in a Turing test implying that the test is impractical.



This might theoretically be true for a quantum particle (yet very questionable), but one cannot deduce from there that a machine consisting of billions of billions of billions of particles has an individual consciousness as well. One cannot add individual (hypothetical) carriers of consciousness in the hope that the additive result is a carrier of consciousness, too. This reminds me of Thomas Hobbes´ concept of ´Leviathan´, that is, the addition of many individual minds to a complex new entity named ´political state´ which shows properties which are different from those of its elements (the humans). However, this new entity has not gained any own consciousness, at least there is no indication for that. A similar argument in the philosophy of mind against materialism is the so-called ´China Brain´:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain

This is the first I have heard of this thought experiment. I would agree with Block that it does not show the existence of consciousness. I also want to avoid a panpsychist approach to mind which claims there is a reducible psychic atom by which our consciousness can be explained. If anything consciousness is top-down not bottom-up.



I do not see a compelling case for both conclusions, as to (1) that they make choices, and (2) that, therefore, they are conscious. The random character of the particles´ behavior does not necessarily mean that there is such a thing like will at work. Moreover, there might be causes which science is simply not able to detect. One should also consider that it is problematic to construct an analogy between human will and the hypothetical ´particle´ will as long as there is no absolute certainty about the ´free´ nature of man´s will. That this will is ´free´ is just an axiom. There is much to suggest that human consciousness has no influence on decision-making which might be completely determinated from the unconscious. This makes an analogy to particles problematic, since under that (hypothetical) condition particles should have an unconscious or subconscious, too. I do not deny this possibility, and this view is actually part of ancient Indian philosophical thinking, but it´s ironic that those materialists who champion a machine consciousness by arguing with quantum particle consciousness are in this respect unknowlingly going in bed with their philosophical antagonists, the Indian vedantists and modern theosophists.

It is good when we find places where we disagree.

1) The choices are not human choices. What defines a "choice" is the absence of any hidden variables based on determinism or uniformly-distributed randomness. The particle does not have to be aware that a choice was made. One can use this concept to expand on the choices that we make that we think are "unconscious" but which we admit are our choices.

2) If something makes a choice it is outside of both a deterministic and a random framework. I am defining this to be basic consciousness.

3) If the randomness were uniform, that is, given two possibilities the probability of going one way or the other is always 50%, then there might be a path to unconsciousness. But that is not the case. The probabilities are not uniform.

4) I think the use of the word "unconscious" with respect to humans is inappropriate. We are "unaware" at times, but not unconscious. Our consciousness is not totally individualistic. It is also shared. I don't expect particles to be aware, but their behavior can be interpreted as making choices. This is the very thing that an AI robot is unable to do, because I can reduce any alleged "choice" made by the robot to the "hidden variables" in its programming. There are no hidden variables (no programming) at the quantum level.

5) Regarding human free will, I will assume we have it to some minimal extent to avoid determinism. I am assuming the common sense view of free will is correct since I see no data justifying that it is not true.

6) I don't think people supporting AI would argue that quantum particles are conscious. They need these particles to be unconscious. They are mainly interested in saying that our human consciousness is trivial or nonexistent and claim that their robots will prove this in the future. At the moment those robots aren't able to prove anything about consciousness.



Since the Big Bang Theory is originally the idea of a Jesuit priest named Georges Lemaitre (and not of Chuck Lorre) it can naturally be suspected of being a transformation of Catholic ideas into scientific language. The main contra-arguments are (1) that there is a appearingly more plausible alternative view of things, that is, the theory of the oscillating universe, and (2) that a creatio ex nihilo implied by that theory is a quite anti-scientific concept.

At the moment I don´t have a clue about what you mean. Why is it still true that there was an origin (in the sense of creatio ex nihilo?)? Why should it be theoretically impossible that "after the universe began" (what is hypothetical and in my view wrong in an absolute sense) such a thing like ´unconscious matter´ could not originate howsoever?

I don't know what people mean when they say "creatio ex nihilo" or something coming from nothing. My view is that nothing comes from nothing so I would be opposed to the creatio ex nihilo argument. Whatever our universe is made of has always existed. But what is our universe made of? My claim is that it is not made out of unconscious matter and that goes back to the quantum Turing test I outlined above.

I think Catholics can still use a "creatio ex nihilo" argument to describe what happened at the beginning of our universe if they define "nihilo" as nothing unconscious. The universe did not need unconscious matter to be created. Or, no unconscious matter was used in the creation of the universe because there is no unconscious matter.

I used to think the universe was oscillating from big bang to big bang, but I don't think that is the case any more. Our universe had a beginning, whether the big bang explains how that was done or not, and this probably happened many times in similar ways throughout eternity. For life to exist we need a big but finite universe. To fill out eternity, this creation of finite universes can happen over and over again. This is not the "multi-verse" idea which uses the anthropic principle to randomly pop out universes so that one of them will have life in it. In my view, all of these universes contain life. There is no need for randomness because consciousness controls the process.

[Tammuz]

Hi YesNo, thanks for your reply, I will answer soo.

[Tammuz]

Thanks for the reply, YesNo. I will answer soon.

[Tammuz]

The save-function didn´t work well, therefore the repeated posts. I don´t know how to delete them.

[YesNo]

I sometimes have problems with performance on the site as well.

What I am describing is a work-in-progress model or theory that makes sense to me at the moment. I keep changing my mind although the direction away from dualism and materialism remains more or less intact. I assume reality is more interesting than any model I'll be able to make of it.

[YesNo]

I view soul as a traveler playing a "Choose your own adventure" -game. After the first game is over, he moves on to another game. The traveler grows through the decisions he makes playing the game, and the ultimate meaning of the traveler's journey is the journey itself - the development he goes through. The ultimate end goal of the traveler's journey is a mystery - and in my opinion, it's irrelevant.

I think I agree with that about the end goal being irrelevant. Or, in terms of religious groups that believe in heaven and hell, we all go to heaven in the end although some of us do it with more unpleasant adventures along the way than others.

[YesNo]

Part 2:

1. The soul can exist apart from the body after death. Because the soul is spiritual, it is immortal.

2. But there is an incompleteness in this until reunited with the body at the end of the world i.e. our salvation and resurrection.

I would hopefully look forward to being reunited with my past body of 21 years old, but am quite prepared to accept the mental state of my 73 years !!

3. It is the condition of our soul at the end of mortal life that determines our eternal lot.

• It raises the existence of a transitional test during our mortal coil.

• Another interpretation that I came across, (A Jesuit I believe, teaching Grahame Greene) is that it’s not a question of what God forbids, but what he tolerates. This would be more in line with a forgiving God dealing with struggling mortals.

I hope there will be a Part 3.

Regarding what happens after life, I look to what people who report near-death experiences have to say. I think out-of-body experiences have been demonstrated scientifically, that is, one can stimulate the brain to trigger such experiences. So the soul can exist apart from the body. The body may also be a kind of soul at another level and there may be souls without bodies.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

Soul and body are integrated parts…how
Of course everyone has his unique character and for instance if a family is composed of many brothers and sisters it is hardly to see all of them having the same characteristics of a similar habits and sense but they are maybe similar into more bodies shape, face shape, epidermis colour and so on….
Are all the dissimilar or the similar characteristics of bodies due to chromosomes? If we accept on this theory and it is altogether correct but the difference relating to nature between one person to another or between one brother to another is not related to chromosomes but it is rather related to another thing is hidden on heart or in blood or on any part of the body. Perhaps someone will reply that this factor you mentioned is hidden on brain and the brain is responsible to all the human moral constitutions like hate, love, greed, rancor and every good or not good morality temperaments attributed physically or non-physically.
Of course, the material of soul cannot be touched by hand or it can be seen by eyes or by microscope but it can be felt while, for instance, we sometimes have a feel that we are not ourselves asking inside soul are we or not.

[Tammuz]

Of course, the material of soul cannot be touched by hand or it can be seen by eyes or by microscope but it can be felt while, for instance, we sometimes have a feel that we are not ourselves asking inside soul are we or not.

Very interesting location where you are posting from...

To my knowledge, in Islam the soul is thought to be composed of two ingredients: naf (person, ego) and ruh (spirit). This corresponds to the soul model in Judaism (nephesh = person, ego) and ruach (spirit). In both cases, the ego-part is mortal while the spirit-part is immortal and something like a connection to the divine. In Indian Vedanta, there is the Subtle Body (Suksma sarira) what corresponds to person/ego, and the Causal Body (Karana sarira) as sort of spirit (similar to ruh and ruach in Islam and Judaism). Of course there is a big difference between the concept of the divine in Indian non-theistic Vedanta and in Islam/Jewish monotheism: the Indian divine has no ´will´ and no personality while Yahveh and Allah bear strong traits of personality and intentionality. In Islamic Sufism, the connection to the divine seems to bridge the gap between the divine (Allah) and the human mind to a degree that human spirit is able to unite completely with the divine (Allah) what corresponds to the mystical ideas in, among other things, Brahmanism, Vedanta, Neoplatonism and Christian mysticism.

The US philosopher Emerson about the soul:

From Ralph Waldo Emerson, ´Essay IX The Over-Soul´:

All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie, — an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. A man is the fasade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself.
(...)
Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. Language cannot paint it with his colors. It is too subtile. It is undefinable, unmeasurable, but we know that it pervades and contains us. We know that all spiritual being is in man.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

For Tammoz and all other readers:

Regarding to Koran, many verses of Koran referred to the essence of soul taking it into a sacred halo of respect so I am perplexed into choosing the easy understandable one but let me focusing on this one:
Allah almighty said in the Sura ( Thariat); " Into their souls and you are not enough aware, beyond the skies is your living reason and everything you would be promised taken it; so it is obvious as much as you pronounce a word".
If the last phrase we reasonably read it, no doubt, we shall find out so much compression was made between soul and passing one's lips, which it is sensible to compare with the substance of soul. Therefore, it is no doubt that soul is a material like any material but it cannot be diagnosed for eyes.
2- another verse is not less important of the previous Allah mentioned in Sura ( Fusslat) " We shall show them our miracles in horizons and inside their souls". In the last example it is very obvious that the Creator could show people as they could see something by their naked eyes as to look for a feature or a phenomenon that can be seen as for example, the rainbow or any natural feature that does happen in sky or earth.

[YesNo]

Of course there is a big difference between the concept of the divine in Indian non-theistic Vedanta and in Islam/Jewish monotheism: the Indian divine has no ´will´ and no personality while Yahveh and Allah bear strong traits of personality and intentionality. In Islamic Sufism, the connection to the divine seems to bridge the gap between the divine (Allah) and the human mind to a degree that human spirit is able to unite completely with the divine (Allah) what corresponds to the mystical ideas in, among other things, Brahmanism, Vedanta, Neoplatonism and Christian mysticism.
[/I]

When I hear the word "non-theistic" used in English spiritualist or New Age contexts I have to ask myself how this non-theism relates to "materialism"? In an eastern context this might have been a way to move beyond multiple local dieties. In the west, I see it as a way to embrace materialism.

I don't trust New Age spiritualism. It is too easy for it, in a western context where English is spoken, to be either a sugar-coating of atheistic materialism or a sugar-coating of Christian dualism. I have to see this spirituality explicitly reject both materialism and dualism and promote "consciousness" or some other term representing what we experience through our subjectivity.

[YesNo]

Therefore, it is no doubt that soul is a material like any material but it cannot be diagnosed for eyes.

That is sort of how I see it. However, the word "material" in English suggests that this is unconscious matter.

When one says the "soul is a material like any material", this could be interpreted in two different ways:

1) The material world is like the soul and hence there is no unconscious matter. Everything is soul-like although we may not see matter in this way. I agree with this idealist position.

2) The soul is just as unconscious as the material world. The soul can be reduced to unconscious matter although we may not see the soul in this way. I do not agree with this materialist position.

Dualists would like to have both unconscious matter and soul.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

That is sort of how I see it. However, the word "material" in English suggests that this is unconscious matter.

When one says the "soul is a material like any material", this could be interpreted in two different ways:

1) The material world is like the soul and hence there is no unconscious matter. Everything is soul-like although we may not see matter in this way. I agree with this idealist position.

2) The soul is just as unconscious as the material world. The soul can be reduced to unconscious matter although we may not see the soul in this way. I do not agree with this materialist position.

Dualists would like to have both unconscious matter and soul.

OK, you are right in some views:
No, indeed, it is conscious because everybody has unique soul as God said ' Every soul should have death" and He did not say everybody or every person so that if we agree that it is unconscious, we shall give it out of the body senses, yes in this view I accept with you to say, "Soul is not related to physical body senses and reactions. Supposing it is a part of a body essence, whether to say it is located on brain or any part of the body, however, as we are not able touching it or to see it, we cannot say it is found in such part of a body. Material thing or substance is not always related to a materialism theory. Indeed the viewpoints that I brought and you comment under are a part of Islamic Sufi views. In return, to your views, I accept with you as much as you meant the worldly views.
Now I want asking one question dear YesNo:
If you are tempting to do some of devilish sins, do you follow these sins by your soul or by your body?

[Tammuz]

When I hear the word "non-theistic" used in English spiritualist or New Age contexts I have to ask myself how this non-theism relates to "materialism"? In an eastern context this might have been a way to move beyond multiple local dieties. In the west, I see it as a way to embrace materialism.

"Non-theistic" in the context I mentioned means denying a personal nature of the divine and instead emphasizing the non-personal nature of the divine, that is, the divine is thought to be empty of all human-like characteristics which are ascribed to the divine in theistic concepts. In the Indian Upanishads and in Vedanta, the plurality of deities in the Vedic hymns, that is, the magical-mythical world of numerous anthropomorphic representations of the divine, as well as the complexity of the material world becomes reduced to the state of being a ´illusionary reality´ (maya), deceiving the mind and the eye of man and conceiling the true dimension of existence, that is, the unchangeable formless divine. ´Atman´ is thought to be the mostly unconsioucs core of the human subject, which on the one hand lives with the illusion of existing as a mortal individual and being isolated from the rest of the world, while on the other hand - as Atman - being identical with the dimension of true existence, the Brahman, which beyond time and space emanates and absorbs all elements of the illusionary phenomenal world in kind of a circular movement. Thus Brahman, the non-personal divine, is at once transcending the phenomena and pervading them, since it is thought to be the only reality. Accordingly, the authors of the Upanishads draw the conclusion that to escape the tragic-comedy of the maya world man has to recognize his identity (that is, the identity of Atman, the soul core) with Brahman.


I don't trust New Age spiritualism. It is too easy for it, in a western context where English is spoken, to be either a sugar-coating of atheistic materialism or a sugar-coating of Christian dualism. I have to see this spirituality explicitly reject both materialism and dualism and promote "consciousness" or some other term representing what we experience through our subjectivity.

´New Age´ spiritualism is a very wide field and full of diverging teachings. Could you say in more detail to what or whom you are referring?

As to the other topics I intend to shortly continue the debate in a separate ´philosophy of mind´-thread in the philosophy department of this forum.

[YesNo]

Now I want asking one question dear YesNo:
If you are tempting to do some of devilish sins, do you follow these sins by your soul or by your body?

If you think about what kind of things the body would tempt you to do, they might fall into wanting (1) food, (2) sex, or (3) sleep. There might be others. It would be counterproductive for the body to tempt us to eat so much that obesity occurs. We have to tempt the body or override its normal behavior to get obesity. So, the soul does the tempting.

However, to say it is the soul suggests it is some "individual" soul and I don't think the soul is completely individuated. So where the temptation could actually come from may be neither the body nor the individuated aspect of the soul. Some call this culture, but it could go beyond culture. Culture is too mechanistic a solution for the source of temptation.

[YesNo]

"Non-theistic" in the context I mentioned means denying a personal nature of the divine and instead emphasizing the non-personal nature of the divine, that is, the divine is thought to be empty of all human-like characteristics which are ascribed to the divine in theistic concepts. In the Indian Upanishads and in Vedanta, the plurality of deities in the Vedic hymns, that is, the magical-mythical world of numerous anthropomorphic representations of the divine, as well as the complexity of the material world becomes reduced to the state of being a ´illusionary reality´ (maya), deceiving the mind and the eye of man and conceiling the true dimension of existence, that is, the unchangeable formless divine. ´Atman´ is thought to be the mostly unconsioucs core of the human subject, which on the one hand lives with the illusion of existing as a mortal individual and being isolated from the rest of the world, while on the other hand - as Atman - being identical with the dimension of true existence, the Brahman, which beyond time and space emanates and absorbs all elements of the illusionary phenomenal world in kind of a circular movement. Thus Brahman, the non-personal divine, is at once transcending the phenomena and pervading them, since it is thought to be the only reality. Accordingly, the authors of the Upanishads draw the conclusion that to escape the tragic-comedy of the maya world man has to recognize his identity (that is, the identity of Atman, the soul core) with Brahman.

Whatever maya we experience can be derived right from physics. We don't have to go to eastern traditions. For example, the only reason I feel the table and chair I sit on as solid is because my body is not made out of neutrinos. If it were I would move right through the table and chair. All that I see as solid is mostly empty space. The only kind of maya that I am willing to acknowledge is this sort of maya that has been experimentally validated by modern physics.

The reason for that is because I have to be careful of pseudo-science speculations in the modern west. I have to be careful not to assume that our consciousness itself is maya. It is not. If it were there would be no ground for science.

We are in a far worse cultural situation today regarding the "divine" than Indians were in the past with anthropomorphic dieties. The reason it is worse, is because our cultural view of maya is dehumanizing. So, I would claim that any modern conception of the "divine" has to be explicitly characterized as super-personal, not "non-personal" to make sure I am avoiding a cultural dead-end. The divine is not less than we are. It cannot be reduced to a Higgs field, for example.



´New Age´ spiritualism is a very wide field and full of diverging teachings. Could you say in more detail to what or whom you are referring?

As to the other topics I intend to shortly continue the debate in a separate ´philosophy of mind´-thread in the philosophy department of this forum.

I distrust western Buddhist spiritualism. In particular, Stephen Batchelor's "Buddhism Without Beliefs".

[Mohammad Ahmad]

A good subject to deal with yet...
O, users, you made it further extent of argument.
Soul and body can be united for one reason, any person has a private soul and private instincts; those private things are not wholly followed by body desire but to something are still not recognized.
One thing, man would die yet his heart still palpating for 3-4 seconds after the occasion. I don't know why but I heard from doctors who were present while following someone at death. It maybe the that brain yet is not responded so that I may absolutely think why this does happen and perhaps I think the reason is beyond brain so soul it maybe also is found in human brain.

[YesNo]

Maya is not something objective in the world around us. It is an illusion, but there is no illusion unless someone is having the illusion as a subjective experience. Maya is a form of subjectivity. Without consciousness of some sort capable of having illusions there would be no maya.

Take the idea of "brain" and "heart" that Mohammad brings up. Is the soul in the brain? Perhaps it is in the heart? Perhaps it is in both? Perhaps it is beyond both but our experience focuses it in our body? Perhaps it is a cultural delusion reducible to some random or deterministic configuration of hypothetical unconscious atoms? Perhaps the belief that it is such a cultural delusion is itself a mad delusion?

[YesNo]

I'm still trying to make sense of the idea of maya (a Hindu-Buddhist word meaning "illusion"). I could get it wrong. That would be another sort of maya, perhaps a derived illusion. So I have to be careful. Not just everything I come up with (nor what others come up with) is true.

I will let this be my starting part: the universe is good. This comes from Genesis in the Jewish Tanakh. Christians accept this text and perhaps Muslims do as well. I wonder if Hindus or Buddhists accept it? If they accept it they should have no problems with reincarnation. It doesn't matter. It is my first assumption and it makes sense, even without the approval of Genesis, to accept it.

I have enough subjectivity to be aware that I am within this universe. This means I am not the whole universe. There is reality outside of me and so my subjective experience will be from only my perspective. That is where maya (illusion) starts. In order to be me as a subject, I must have this maya. I don't see all the space in the atoms in the table, but my perspective lets me see the table as something solid. It is my perspective on reality and since I am part of a good universe, this subjective experience of maya (illusion) must be good as well. I don't see anything wrong with being in the universe and having, because of that, a perspective.

Knowing that I don't see everything completely as it is, I go about trying to find out what is true beyond my perspective. This leads to evolutionary change where I try to get closer to what is true by objectifying through words and art (modifying the world around me). The objects I create have two features.

(1) These objects lack subjectivity and so they cannot represent the whole of reality because they do not even represent my whole perspective. They are only objects (texts, pictures, tools, machines, robots) coming from my (our) subjective perspective of reality and to make sense out of them I (we) have to experience them through our subjectivity again.

(2) These objectifications of subjective reality also objectify my illusions or maya. I have to be careful with these texts and objects.

So, I can't escape maya and I can't completely find out what is really real, but I can get closer. Is it worth doing that? Sure it is. I'm here. I have nothing else to do. I'll go as far down the rabbit hole as I can before getting stuck on something and I will do my best not to get stuck on stuff that makes no sense.

[MANICHAEAN]

Jacks Bar Bangkok.

Time for reflection again. For some reason today it centres around ambition: gained, thwarted, elusive, too late.

I suppose when I was a young man it all revolved around money. There was none, hence the drive. Marriage, kids, happiness, (whatever that is) was secondary.

It seems strange now in my dotage as to what was actually achieved. The money goal has been well achieved,but the rest; marriage (a disaster), family (snatched at whenever there was time). I had managed to gain respect and was pleased with that; being able to help people, holding down some quite senior jobs.

But in the conventional sense with conventional values I suppose I ended up the outsider.

I can't be the only one however. How many out there I have come across who had to sacrifice original values due to circumstances and pressure. How many women prepared to sacrifice all dignity to raise a child without a father or means of support? How many men prepared to turn the cheek against humiliation in order to protect their jobs?

The whole point of having money lies not in being able to afford things; and I'm talking beyond the basics; but in the independence it gives you to plow your own furrow, to answer back where you disagree and the peace of mind that you can survive in your mortal existence.

Which brings us to the soul and spirituality. Is it necessary? I happen to think so, not because I want to save my soul from damnation, but that it satisfies that dual nature in any man of imagination and sensitivity.

Is it an illusion, a joke, as many men more learned than myself would argue? Who am I to argue with such rational beings?

All I know is that I sit today on the banks of the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok, the breeze is in my face, the Thais are smiling and at peace, and I am grateful to be among them.

[Danik 2016]

"The whole point of having money lies not in being able to afford things; and I'm talking beyond the basics; but in the independence it gives you to plow your own furrow, to answer back where you disagree and the peace of mind that you can survive in your mortal existence."
In other words, enough money means autonomy. And I think there is also wealth in getting out of ones national nutshell and sharing the life with people from other countries.

[YesNo]

Which brings us to the soul and spirituality. Is it necessary? I happen to think so, not because I want to save my soul from damnation, but that it satisfies that dual nature in any man of imagination and sensitivity.

Is it an illusion, a joke, as many men more learned than myself would argue? Who am I to argue with such rational beings?


One of the things I learned from reading Prechter's socionomics views is that perspectives on reality change with social mood. In particular, he could plot how people treated his own work compared with that of economists who believed the market is a random machine. During bull markets, mechanistic random walk and efficient market models dominate. During bear markets his holistic perspective on social mood gained an audience.

Once we get into a bear market and negative social mood dominates, the idea that spirituality is an illusion should be rejected with more hostility than it is today. Holistic views, which are close to magical views, will get a sympathetic hearing. One gauge of social mood, a sociometer as Prechter calls it, might be how willing people become to "argue with such rational beings" if one can find a way to measure it.

[Tammuz]

Whatever maya we experience can be derived right from physics. We don't have to go to eastern traditions. For example, the only reason I feel the table and chair I sit on as solid is because my body is not made out of neutrinos. If it were I would move right through the table and chair. All that I see as solid is mostly empty space. The only kind of maya that I am willing to acknowledge is this sort of maya that has been experimentally validated by modern physics.

As far as I remember you are acknowledging the existence of qualia which however cannot be detected and therefore validated by modern physics. So why is physics now sort of ultima ratio for you? Anyway, what is meant with ´maya´ in Vedanta transcends the physical field by far. It is in large part similar to Kant´s epistemological model: the human mind is not able to perceive the true reality, since it has no access to the ´things-in-themselves´, that is, the noumenal world. Instead cognition is composed of (a) sense-data, (b) the ´pure forms of intuition´, and (c) the functions of mind which categorize and structure the formless mass of sense-data within the frame of (b). This frame, the pure forms of intuition, is composed of (1) time and (2) space, what makes it possible to the mind to arrange the sense-data-material in succession as well as side by side. On this basis, the functions of (c) come into force. In sum, human mind is in Kant´s view not able to perceive things how they are but merely how they appear. I was referring to this some weeks ago in the Buddhism / Nagarjuna / Hegel context, maybe you remember. Please note that the subjective (that is in this case, illusory) nature of time and space is part of the Kantian as well as of the Vedanta theory, since Brahman, the Vedantic true reality, is thought to be beyond time and space which both are effects of ´maya´.

In Western philosophy, the Kantian stance is one of several possible perspectives on the epistemological issue. Some others are Idealism (e.g. German Idealism), Phenomenology (founded by Husserl) and the correspondence theory of truth (truth is correspondence of proposition and concerned object). The latter, the scientific version of the everyday perspective on cognition, was for some time the standpoint of Analytical philosophy (stemming from Wittgenstein) and has now become outdated in favor of a position which goes back to Kant, that is, cognition is thought to be mediated by sense-organs and structured by mind functions and there not able to represent reality as it is. In Buddhist Mahayana philosophy (historically preceding Vedanta), Nagarjuna distinguishes two levels of truth (as I wrote some weeks ago), the conventional truth and the ultimate truth. The first, equatable with the Vedantic maya, is grasped by the rational operations of mind which have, on this level, a mind-expanding function; the second is perceived by transcending the categories of mind which are, on this level, restricting true knowledge. Nagarjuna emphasizes the constructive value of conventional truth for teaching the ultimate truth. However, if conventional truth is hold to be ultimate truth, things go wrong.

In Western philosophy, the philosophical model which comes rather close to the concept of conventional truth is called ´pragmatism´, which was developed by US philosopher William James in the late 19th century. According to that school, the truthfulness of a theory is to be measured by its practical success. The opposite position, already mentioned above, is called ´correspondence theory of truth´. It says that truth lies in the complete correspondence of cognition and reality, or in other words, cognition mirrors reality. One can call this position naive because it presupposes that the sense organs transmit external data in a magical way so perfectly that the output in the conciousness is a one-to-one mapping of the external world.

Thus, the Indian maya concept has strong correspondencies in modern Western philosophy, especially with Kant on whose theory the 20th century school of ´Constructivism´ is founded, asserting the appearance of ´reality´ to be completely constructed by the human mind. Of course, the Indian concept goes far beyond the Western concept by emphasizing the reality of the infinite Brahman as well as the possibility of mind-transcending cognition of Brahman via meditation. Two of the scholars who try to combine Vedanta and Buddhist philosophy with Constructivism and neurobiology are Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. I think you´ll find their working interesting.


We are in a far worse cultural situation today regarding the "divine" than Indians were in the past with anthropomorphic dieties. The reason it is worse, is because our cultural view of maya is dehumanizing. So, I would claim that any modern conception of the "divine" has to be explicitly characterized as super-personal, not "non-personal" to make sure I am avoiding a cultural dead-end. The divine is not less than we are. It cannot be reduced to a Higgs field, for example.

I am not sure whether you really grasp the meaning of ´non-personal´ in the context of spiritual philosophy. It seems to me that you hold it to be something inferior to ´personal´. The opposite is true. The kind of non-personality which spiritual philosophy intends is not regressive but progressive. Spiritual non-personality does not eliminate personality but contains it as an integral however lower part of it, being aware of a ´person´ being just a mask (in ancient Greek, ´persona´ means ´mask´, what is the origin of the person-concept). In this view a ´person´ has no essence but is merely a composition of attributes which is hold together by the ego-function. This function is called ´ahamkara´ in Vedantic philosophy. In Western psychology there are very similar opinions on the nature of the ego, especially in the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan, who declares the ego to be an imaginary construction without any foundation in reality. This theory is part of the French neostructuralism, a philosophical current in the second half of the 20the century which announced the "death of the subject", that is, the lack of any essence on which subjectivity is founded. Instead, subjectivity is thought to be a mere relational product, what comes very close to ego theories in Vedanta and Buddhism. In the following, I will give a short summary of Lacan´s concept of psychological development in the childhood.

In his theory some of the basic concepts are (a) the Thing (la chose), (b) the desire, (c) the Imaginary, (d) the Symbolic, (e) the phantasma, and (f) the ´object a´.

The first, the Thing, is the basic aim of all desire, that is, the mother and, first of all, the mother´s womb. The feeling in the womb gets never eliminated but remains the unconscious basis of all later positive feelings.

The second, the desire, is the basic urge behind all emotional wishes which manifest themselves in "thousand masks" (my tribute to Joseph Campbell) but are spring-fed from the basic urge for the Thing (mother / womb). Psychoanalysts like Otto Rank had long before Lacan emphasized the importance of the womb (as sort of a lost paradise) as a source of unconscious wishes. The state of having lost the ´paradise´ for all times is the Lacanian ´lack´, the motor which boosts the moves of desire.

The third, the Imaginary, is the relationship between child and mother before the Oedipal stage. This relation is mainly characterized by the child´s total claim to the mother´s care and attention. In this stage the ego emerges as a result of the child´s mirroring itself in the mother ("I am what she desires"). This stage is the source of later power fantasies.

The fourth is the Lacanian ´Symbolic Order´, that is, the system of social rules which are represented by the father resp. which are mediated to the child via the symbolic social position which is occupied by the concrete father (or his substitutes). In the Freudian theory, the Symbolic order is that what is introduced by the father during the oedipal stage. Its purpose is to break into the dual symbiosis between child and mother. The child´s ego becomes torn out its binding to the mother and integrated into the social system by learning that it is not the center of the world (as in the mother-child-relationship) but part of the world like all other people, too, exposed to social restraints and burdened with social duties.

The fifth, the phantasma, is a situation or constellation in which an object is woven into, be it in fantasy, be it in reality, for example, a SM scenario where the subject acts out his wishes of superiority to compensate his perceived inferiority.

The sixth, the ´object a´, is that what is unconsciously hidden behind the concrete objects of desire. In the example above, the subject is unconsciously seeking the Thing (the womb feeling) in his sadomasochistic experience, however in a complicated and abstrusely symbolizing manner which draws its contents from unconscious early-infantile sadistic fantasies from the oral, anal, and phallic stage (as to oral sadism, see the work of Melanie Klein).

[Tammuz]

Which brings us to the soul and spirituality. Is it necessary? I happen to think so, not because I want to save my soul from damnation, but that it satisfies that dual nature in any man of imagination and sensitivity.

Is it an illusion, a joke, as many men more learned than myself would argue? Who am I to argue with such rational beings?


From ´The Doors of Perception´ by Aldous Huxley:

http://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPerception.pdf


I continued to look at the flowers, and in their living light I seemed to detect the qualitative equivalent of breathing -but of a breathing without returns to a starting point, with no recurrent ebbs but only a repeated flow from beauty to heightened beauty, from deeper to ever deeper meaning. Words like "grace" and "transfiguration" came to my mind, and this, of course, was what, among other things, they stood for. My eyes traveled from the rose to the carnation, and from that feathery incandescence to the smooth scrolls of sentient amethyst which were the iris. The Beatific Vision, Sat Chit Ananda, Being- Awareness-Bliss-for the first time I understood, not on the verbal level, not by inchoate hints or at a distance, but precisely and completely what those prodigious syllables referred to. And then I remembered a passage I had read in one of Suzuki's essays. "What is the Dharma-Body of the Buddha?" ('"the Dharma-Body of the Buddha" is another way of saying Mind, Suchness, the Void, the Godhead.) The question is asked in a Zen monastery by an earnest and bewildered novice.

(...)

From the books the investigator directed my attention to the furniture. A small typing table stood in the center of the room; beyond it, from my point of view, was a wicker chair and beyond that a desk. The three pieces formed an intricate pattern of horizontals, uprights and diagonals - a pattern all the more interesting for not being interpreted in terms of spatial relationships. Table, chair and desk came together in a composition that was like something by Braque or Juan Gris, a still life recognizably related to the objective world, but rendered without depth, without any attempt at photographic realism. I was looking at my furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and not as the cameraman or scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. But as I looked, this purely aesthetic, Cubist's-eye view gave place to what I can only describe as the sacramental vision of reality. I was back where I had been when I was looking at the flowers-back in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance. The legs, for example, of that chair - how miraculous their tubularity, how supernatural their polished smoothness! I spent several minutes - or was it several centuries? - not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them - or rather being myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for "I" was not involved in the case, nor in a certain sense were "they") being my Not-self in the Not-self which was the chair..

(...)

Reflecting on my experience, I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, "that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful."

According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this Particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.