Mind-body dualism

“ Thus equipped, they will be able to discover that they are a living, working, part of nature, which defined, means the combined life of the planet; that they act upon all things about them and are in turn acted upon. A comprehension of these things can come only to the cultivated mind, and the richer its store of facts, the more perfect its grasp and control of surrounding conditions. Therefore mind, as the expression of the soul and body of the dual individual on the physical plane of existence, is EVERYTHING! ”

“ By the ego of which he treats, I understand him to mean all that we can arrive at by an analysis of what takes place in the body and its functions, and of "what is given in consciousness." This phrase—"what is given in consciousness"—reveals to us his purpose to reduce consciousness from a self-conviction and cognition of one's own existence to a mere passing group of feelings, which constitute "the ever-changing states of consciousness" that we "call mind." ”

“ Or again, they are reconciled and move together, either unconsciously in the ordinary work of life, or consciously in the pursuit of some noble aim, to be attained not without an effort, and for which every thought and nerve are strained. And then the body becomes the good friend or ally, or servant or instrument of the mind. And the mind has often a wonderful and almost superhuman power of banishing disease and weakness and calling out a hidden strength. Reason and the desires, the intellect and the senses are brought into harmony and obedience so as to form a single human being. ”

“ It must not be forgotten in this connection that the subjective mind is the soul, or spirit, and is itself an organized entity, possessing independent powers and functions; while the objective mind is merely the function of the physical brain, and possesses no powers whatever independently of the physical organization. The one possesses dynamic force independently of the body ”

“ Let it simply accentuate for us the fact that the ego does no physical work, but can only by hypothesis decree something as to the direction of work, while it may or may not connote for us anything that is geometrically more definite.
This quasi-perpendicularity appears to me the natural, and perhaps almost necessary, solution of other difficulties that have nothing to do with freedom, but only with the apparent dualism of mind and matter, and with their apparent interaction; while it may also sufficiently suggest the deeper unity in which that dualism doubtless rests. ”

“ It is difficult to rid oneself of the idea that the distance between the spirit and the physical body must be far greater than that between the lower mind and the intelligence, or between the astral and rational bodies. ”

“ Yet such contradiction and conflict are found in the constantly recurring attempted demonstration of the dual nature of the mind or the soul, call the entity what one will. That man has within his organisation tendencies which are relatively higher or lower than others within himself, is not to be disputed; but that such mixture of nature is to be regarded as constituting him of dual mental nature, is a proposition untenable coincidently with the maintenance of the proposition that he is in nature physiologically single. ”

“ So long as we are concerned with human existence as we directly find it in our immediate experience, or assume it in our practical social relations with our fellows, no question of the relation between body and mind can arise, because neither term of the relation is as yet before us. For my own immediate experience I am neither a body nor a soul, nor yet a composite of the two, but simply an individual subject of experiences in direct intercommunion with other individuals. ”

“ Only by such shifting of terms can the notion of the physical process causing, or being transformed into, the mental process for a moment gain credit; and this also greatly sustains the hypothesis of Dualism, with its formidable objections: How can Matter think? How can Mind act on Matter causing Motion? ”

“ Now, for this whole matter of the right conception as to the relations of body and soul, it is clear that any more than partial and increasingly superable antagonism between body and spirit cannot be accepted.
(1) A final Dualism is unsound in Psychology, since all the first materials, stimulations, and instruments for even our most abstract thinking are supplied to us by our sense-perceptions, hence also through the body. It is narrow in Cosmology, for we do not want to isolate man in this great universe of visible things ”

“ And if to this sense of union with the Soul of Nature, that Universal Sub-conscious Mind which holds in the cosmos the same place that the sub-conscious mind does in ourselves--if to this there be superadded a sense of union with the All-creating Spirit from which the Soul of Nature flows, then through the medium of the individual's sub-conscious mind such specialized effects can be produced in his body as to transcend our past experiences without in any way violating the order of the universe. ”

“ The new psychology went further, and seemed convinced that it had actually split personality not only into dualism but also into complex groups, like telephonic centres and systems, that might be isolated and called up at will, and whose physical action might be occult in the sense of strangeness to any known form of force. Dualism seemed to have become as common as binary stars. Alternating personalities turned up constantly, even among one's friends. ”

“ There was a time, it is true, when the old dualistic principle was supreme, when mind and body were regarded as two distinct essences, formed and developed by entirely different agencies, and adapted to each other for a time by some intelligent power distinct from and superior to both ”

“ It has been established on the clearest evidence that thought-transference and reception between two nearly harmonised or sympathetic human beings, or embodied human spirits, are possible, and this without intermediate sense or physical agencies. If, then, between mind and mind on earth, distance or space being no obstacle, matter no hindrance, why not between mind disincarnate—if we can conceive of mind apart from the human brain and organism—and mind incarnate? ”

“ In the first ages, when man and woman composed one creature, two bodies were governed by a single mind; but now, to our misfortune, one body is subject to the control of two minds, each of which having its own separate passions, and endeavouring to gratify them, there is a perpetual contest between them for the government of the body. Any man who considers what passes within himself, will perceive that he thinks and acts more like two men than one. He finds in himself infirmities which he despises ”

“ There is no confusion against which we shall need to be more on our guard than this fallacious identification of Mind or Spirit with the abstract subject of psychological states, and of the “environment” of the individual with Physical Nature. Of course, it is true that we necessarily interpret the inner life of other minds in terms of our own incommunicably individual experience, but it is equally true that our own direct experience of ourselves is throughout determined by interaction with other agents of the same type as ourselves. ”

“ As in normal conditions the man’s soul, inhabiting his body, is held to give it life, to think, speak, and act through it, so an adaptation of the self-same principle explains abnormal conditions of body or mind, by considering the new symptoms as due to the operation of a second soul-like being, a strange spirit. ”

“ Our task in discussing their relation is not to transcend a given dualism, but to get rid of one which we have manufactured for ourselves by the manipulation of experience in the interests of certain special scientific problems. Hence, as MünsterbergMünsterberg well puts it, we have not to find the connection which subsists, as an actual fact, between body and soul, but to invent a connection in keeping with the general scheme of our artificial physical and psychological hypotheses. ”

“ If there be no individual soul either in mind or body, where does personality lie? What is Real Self? How does it differ from soul? Self is living entity, not immutable like soul, but mutable and ever-changing life, which is body when observed by senses, and which is mind when experienced by introspection. It is not an entity lying behind mind and body, but life existent as the union of body and mind. ”

“ On the contrary, the very powers which are evoked in the production of the phenomena constitute one of the strongest links in the chain of evidence [Pg 285] going to show that man possesses within himself an entity which does not depend for its existence upon the continued life of the body. We see that this entity possesses powers which far transcend those of our physical frame; that the mental powers of the subjective mind or entity are exercised independently of our objective senses; that they grow stronger as the body grows weaker, and are strongest in the hour of death. ”

“ We are so occupied with the matters of the sense-life that all unconsciously we become dominated, ruled by the things of the senses. Now in the real life there is the recognition of the fact that the springs of life are all from within, and that the inner always leads and rules the outer. Under the elemental law of Cause and Effect this is always done—whether we are conscious of it or not. But the difference lies here: The master of life consciously and definitely allies himself in mind and spirit with the great central Force and rules his world from within. ”

“ On the contrary, the soul has only one mode of existence; and this is, that while possessed of intelligence (which in itself is incorporeal) it possesses it in a manner implying dependence on the body. The human soul exercises reason always and only in dependence on sense and imagination. ”

“ Hence the orbits of thought, so to speak, must differ among themselves as the initiative ideas differ.”
Have we not here the corollary to, and the explanation of, that law of unconscious cerebration which results in our “ways of thinking,” which shapes our character, rules our destiny? Thoughtful minds consider that the new light which biology is throwing upon the laws of mind is bringing to the front once more the Platonic doctrine, that “An idea is a distinguishable power, self-affirmed, and seen in its unity with the Eternal Essence.” ”

“ Any tendency to an extreme dualism, as to the relations between body and soul, would thus directly help on an inclination to downright Quietism.—Here it is, on the contrary, certain that only in so far as those psycho-physical simplifications are the results of, or conditions for, a deepening multiplicity in unity, a fuller synthetic action of the soul, or, at least, of a fuller penetration by the soul of even one limited experience or idea—an operation which entails not less, but more, energizing of the soul,—are such psycho-physical simplifications of any spiritual advantage or significance. ”

“ We cannot refute the philosopher who would regard all such manifestations as so many physiological processes without any conscious accompaniment. For though every one is directly conscious of his own mental life, no one can experience directly the mental life of another. We cannot inspect directly the psychic processes that go on in other living beings, or in our fellow men. Mind is inferred from action, from behavior. Reactions, adjustments to environment, accompanied by consciousness, by intelligence in us, are rightly judged to have the same accompaniment in other beings, in our neighbours. ”

“ The immediate experiences of finite beings cannot, as such, come together; and to be possessed directly of what is personal to the mind of another, would in the end be unmeaning. Thus souls, in a sense at least, are separate; but, upon the other hand, they are able to act on one other. And I will begin by enquiring how, in fact, they exercise this influence.
The direct action of soul on soul is, for all we know, possible; but we have, at the same time, no reason for regarding it as more. That which influences, and that which acts, is, so far as we know, always the outside of our bodies. ”

“ It is by the agency of no other being that, in the mutual relation of physical and mental activity, consciousness is attained; man himself comes to a feeling of himself. In the being endowed with soul, who on the one hand attains, through integration, an independence that appears as the impulse to self-preservation, on the other hand becomes conscious of this impulse to self-preservation through a centralized nervous system that raises the part-sensations to feelings of the whole, sensation divides into two chief functions, which appear as passion and thought. ”

“ Who can deny that one's physical conditions determine one's character or personality? Who can overlook the fact that one's bodily conditions positively act upon one's personal life? There is no physical organism which remains as a mere passive mechanical instrument of inner life within the world of experience. Moreover, individuality, or personality, or self, or inner life, whatever you may call it, conceived as absolutely independent of physical condition, is sheer abstraction. There is no such concrete personality or individuality within our experience. ”

“ In all our conscious states, there is such a synthetic unity between the determinations of our mind and the self, that they cannot be distinguished one from the other—a fact which is exemplified in all our cognitions, which are the union of the knower and the known. ”

“ There must also be an absolute co-necessity between them; thus, the three principles of our being--life, mind and soul--form a trinity.
"Why?
"Because life and mind are one and the same soul; soul and mind are one and the same life; life and soul are one and the same mind." ”