Spiritual Mind

(4-minute read) – Our actions are effected by how we view ourselves and the world. The most telling is how we view the human mind – is it a spiritual mind or a machine?

One pole is the spiritual mind. Some believe in a spiritual dimension to our selves, a consciousness that is more than biology. These typically view the world as interconnected energy, somehow more than the sum of its physical parts. At this pole, the human mind can be thought of as a local feature of universal energy; a manifestation of high excitation.

On the opposite pole, some think humans are biological, physical beings only and the world as merely a lot of other physical objects. The mind is a super-advanced software program in a piece of living meat with enormous computational ability due to chemical reactions between highly evolved cells call neurons. Nothing more.

The most likely truth

The former pole makes more sense to the mystical mind that experiences more to mind than brainpower. Existential evidence points to a spiritual mind, even if scientific evidence doesn’t.

I subscribe to the former concept of our minds as local manifestations of energy – as more than the effect of chemical brainpower.

Considering the mind as more would explain why it has the innate ability to intuitively know and understand reality. The mind is able to relate to and connect with the universe and describe its workings amazingly accurately.

How else would humans have come up with mathematics, science and all the other ‘languages’ that describe how the universe works? Our minds do an awesome job of understanding our world.

According to Einstein, one has to use an “extra-logical, intuitive” ability to make sense of human experiences – to get ideas. Only after that can one apply the computational brain to develop these intuitive ideas. We have a feeling first. Then we test it logically.

Einstein’s genius lay first and foremost in his ability to intuitively penetrate or connect with reality. Then he brought his mathematical aptitude to bear in rational processes of verifying, comparing and proving.

So the creative mind works by perceiving things first, followed by scientific methods. The perceiving is passive – like a surprise gift to the mind. Ideas come in moments of ‘no-thought’ or in fanciful day-dreaming. These moments are mystical union. At their strongest they move us with awe and clarity at the majesty of reality.

The thinking required to understand and explain the ideas is disciplined activity of mind – the super-computer part. But it’s very ineffective without the passive intuitive part.

Machine mind is dangerous

We focus on the wrong aspect of mind at our peril

The super-computer part doesn’t feel. It doesn’t connect. And it doesn’t love. Humans do all these things, so it makes no sense to believe our minds are nothing more than computers.

Yet western scientific tradition tends to disregard mystical union and go straight to disciplined thinking – the super-computer. Our culture has been shaped by René Descartes’ philosophy that the world is only describable in terms of shapes, sizes and motions of bits of matter. We value the super-computer in our education and in our children because western intellectual tradition says logic, proof and discipline are most important. Mystical stuff is not real to the typical western scientific mind.

At least that has been the case… but it seems to be changing. Many of us modern people sense that there is more to reality and more to our brains than discrete bits of matter.

Looking at our world from an isolated, biological machine’s perspective, without any sense of union with it, has lead us to unprecedented incidence of depression and to the brink of social and ecological disaster.

 

Doctor J. R. Kriel puts it succinctly:

“If we consider consciousness and mind to be ‘nothing but’ the random firing of neurons in the brain, it will profoundly affect the way in which we treat people, animals and the environment, and the value we place on the cultural products of our and other societies.

Our view of mind determines what and how we teach in our schools, legislate in our parliaments, manage our environment and create or destroy our future. It is therefore vital that we have to overcome the fundamental untruth of positivism that only the physico-chemical is real, and confront the epidemic delusion that only numerical and measurable reality has validity. These views inevitably lead to a devaluation of the human self.

Michael Polanyi, the chemist who later became a philosopher, was convinced of the link between our view of science and the way we live. He believed that the inadequate view of science, and the nature of reality that dominates the modern western consciousness, underlies the social disasters that have affected Western Europe. This inadequate understanding has serious social consequences.”

Let go of western indoctrination

Letting go of cultural norms is difficult. Intellectuals tell us that mind is matter and material reality is all there is to it. We’re taught the supremacy of rational and logical thought. Our education system and our expansionist culture tell us it is weak and lazy to be day-dreaming and forever seeking beauty and love – such foolish minds don’t amount to much in this world.

But more of us better awaken to the spiritual mind. For if the intellectual elites and the materialist achievers continue thinking up ways forward, we will run ever-faster down a road of individual depression and collective destruction.

Let us be guided by the spiritual dimension to our selves, a consciousness that is more than biology. Revel in the awe of an interconnected energy, somehow more than the sum of its physical parts.

Let go, think less, know less… and in so doing know more.