to what extent is mind a part of our body?

[chocolatechipcookie]

anybody thought of dualism of mind (soul) and body (matter) ?

or do you incline to the materialistic point of view and believe any thinking and feeling is happening due to chemical processes in our brain?

can our mind outlive our body?

[Kharakov]

anybody thought of dualism of mind (soul) and body (matter) ?

or do you incline to the materialistic point of view and believe any thinking and feeling is happening due to chemical processes in our brain?

can our mind outlive our body?
I am of the view that our mind (soul) is a product of our body (God). God does act in certain specific ways physically- which is why food & drugs effect us the way they do...

[MellowMagician]

My idea is that there are three parts that make up a human being. Body, soul, and spirit. The spirit being the immortal aspect that will continue to live on and reincarnate or stay in the afterlife. The mind and the spirit are the same. When you strengthen your mind you strengthen your spirit.

[sassure]

The brain cannot outlive the body...but the intelligence manifested by that mind is an energy construct that can outlast the physical body.....but that energy must be thoroughly developed to be able to endure.....

[Art Delfo]

you(us all) are inside your mind which gives you(us all) information which is picked up by the body.

[Caitlin]

I think we are beyond the mind, and this mind is a part of our created life on earth in the physical realm, attached to the ego. Wholly, we are beyond the seperated mind.

[WHorseTurtle]

What about the heart? It is the heart chakra where the dreams and desires of soul are annouced and made clear. So, open your heart and spin the chakra/holograph and you shall find it to be the perfect conduit for communications with your Soul, Oversoul and Source.

Namaste all ;)
Francine

[Inquiring-Mind]

When people die, when their bodies stop operating the brain is usually active for 10 seconds or so before it goes out. Therefore, the brain depends on the body to feed it and the body depends on the brain for instructions.

[entheojim]

if we look at the mind and the body a 2 seporate things we can get lost. our mind uses our body to influence this physical reality. and our body teaches our mind. in this level of understanding reality that we wake up in every day we need our body or our minds would be lost. and they would not learn new things and thus be dead. Our bodys need our minds or else they would be lost and just another part in the machine. so i think to view them as seporate would be silly fr me

thats not to say that we cant reach seporation through "dreaming" or medatation

[chocolatechipcookie]

well Im not sure myself what to believe. Our brain seems to be responsible of every aspect of thinking,(not incl. as known other inevitable tasks), which involves not only sense perceptions and explanations + memory + learning+ emotion + higher order thinking + sleeping... It seems to be responsible for our personality. On the other hand, although many clues lead that way, it is uncertain to say where all of it is located and how does it emerge.
It is also hard to say to what extent is everyone similar, there seems to be a lot of inner life going on in each other's head, imagination, emotion, perception, understanding.. And what is responsible for it, spirit or the mind, or the body?
I'm not sure either if hard does anything else at all but circulates our blood around
so the question still reminds open for me...
(but I would rather believe something lasts forever)

[MrRee]

anybody thought of dualism of mind (soul) and body (matter) ?

or do you incline to the materialistic point of view and believe any thinking and feeling is happening due to chemical processes in our brain?

can our mind outlive our body?can our mind outlive our body?
It does
do you incline to the materialistic point of view and believe any thinking and feeling is happening due to chemical processes in our brain
I believe that chemicals open neural pathways that allow perception to be heightened by disassociating from the physicality of being and connectiong with the spiritual;ity of being. Try reading Terence McKenna's books.
anybody thought of dualism of mind (soul) and body (matter) ?
Yep, all the time, But there is no "duality" as such, because the physical and the spiritual integrate in the same way that E=MC2, ie matter is composed of energy, and energy is convertible into matter. No conflict in that, just integration/disintegration ~ what the Hindu god Shiva represents....life and death, appearance and disappearance, integration and disintegration.
I find it best to always keep in mind that we have a viewpoint of "life" which is confined by the parameters and perspective of where we are now. Like if you stand at the bottom of a cliff and look up, you can't see the very top but think that you can. It is only when you are at the very top that you can see clearly both where you are and where you were. "Here and There" are relative to where you ARE. That's what relativity is, and relativity appears to be dualistic when in fact it is simply a perspective of where you are viewing from.

[MollyBloom]

MellowMagician, your sig is freakin hilarious!

[themnax]

to exactly the same extent that the software that runs on our computers is a part of their hardware. it isn't exactly. but it is where and how and with what our awairness interfaces with it. but the software that runs on your computer isn't you, the 'end user' either. in the mind/brain context that is your awairness which is the 'end user' and neither mind nor brain.

mind does not equal soul. awairness equals soul. mind running on brain interfaces awairness/soul to the mind/brain organic life form.

so it is not mind but awairness, bereft of mind and memory, taking with it only our intrinsic preferences by which awirness defines itself, that is alone independent of the brain and it's tangable organic life.

it is for this reason that what we know of previous lives is limited to what can be implied from the preferences of our nontangable awairnessess.

preferences which are refined and educated through the mindfullness with which we live

[TomDijon]

if you procreate, does your body not live on? if you create art, does not a part of your mind/soul live on? where do you draw the line for your body? is your saliva a part of your body? what about a hair? what about the oil that would remain after billions of years of your body decaying? is that your body? and your mind, is that your personality? your soul? or your central processing unit? you ever notice that when you dream there are many people you know in it? are they still those people? or are they you?

i once, in a dream, asked a friend if he was real or if he was just a product of my mind, and he looked at me like he was thinking about it, and then said, kinda both...

[Nimrod's Apprentice]

Your body keeps your brain safe, your brain runs your body. Your cells each ahve mini-brains. You have muscle memory. Neuropathways connect and send messages to receptors. If these are blocked you can get major malfunctions phsyically. IE what happens when you dislocate a kneecap. lol I know I did it twice.

Your mind or train of thought definately I think flows from the outside and inside and can go any direction. It flows like a river and all that shit. Seriously.

The soul hasn't been proved yet, but I kinda think its a super concious intelligence being amde of light waves, and particles. Connected to a cosmic grid made of the same similar substance. Walking through a matrix of these cosmic grids. This animates the body, and justifies the mind, also harnessing it from all directions inside and out. Then alchemizing it into everything we know.

[StonerBill]

ive yet to experience or whitness any type of thought that defies the physical contstraints of the brain, and thus, it have no rational choice but to say that i believe the mind is a physical process.

maybe the spirits have just not touched me with whatever magical feeling or process it is that all you metaphysic believers have experienced which makes you think otherwise

[Nimrod's Apprentice]

the mind is a physical process
Course it is.

just feeds off the inside and outside

[bamboo]

When people die, when their bodies stop operating the brain is usually active for 10 seconds or so before it goes out. Therefore, the brain depends on the body to feed it and the body depends on the brain for instructions.
Actually electrical energy contiues to manifest in the brain for up to several hours after death...atleast until the undertaker pumps it full of formaldihyde (major SP). The levels of activity are nothing like conscous levels of electrical activity but they still persist...I know, I have seen it. I wonder how many after death experiencs are cut short by the undertaker.

[themnax]

awairness is not limited to thought and mind.

only awairness is true self.

it is true there is nothing tangable without these limitations.
awairness/soul is not however, in any way tangable.

nothing has to be tangable to exist.
this is only what we are used to thinking in terms of.

=^^=
.../\...

[Columbo]

anybody thought of dualism of mind (soul) and body (matter) ?

or do you incline to the materialistic point of view and believe any thinking and feeling is happening due to chemical processes in our brain?

We can open up a brain and not see the mind.
likewise there would be nothing that we could call a soul.
Could it work like this - The brain, being responsible for interpreting the external world, is triggered by both sensory events, and events within the brain. Each response to stimuli must also make sense to the brain so we analyse the stimulus and our response -
what we call thinking is merely a different, but related, causal chain to that which is the original stimuli.
There is only the brain and its processes - no mind - no soul
what we call "mind" or "soul" is merely a set of processes the brain performs to aid our existence and survival

[shaman sun]

awairness is not limited to thought and mind.

only awairness is true self.

it is true there is nothing tangable without these limitations.
awairness/soul is not however, in any way tangable.

nothing has to be tangable to exist.
this is only what we are used to thinking in terms of.

=^^=
.../\...

Well said.

[bluenude]

In my opinion: the soul or spirit, which is made up of energy, is where our true self exists. Our physical selves are that energy slowed down to a rate visible to the eye. Our minds are a part of our physical self. So our thoughts are manifestations of our spirit and the way it interacts with the environment around it via the vehicle that is our body.

[heeh2]

awairness is not limited to thought and mind.

only awairness is true self.

it is true there is nothing tangable without these limitations.
awairness/soul is not however, in any way tangable.

nothing has to be tangable to exist.
this is only what we are used to thinking in terms of.

=^^=
.../\...


i would like to think awareness is not limited to the thought of mind also, but in a less forward mannor.....

i think awareness is not conceivable without cognizance and cognition itself does not need a particular vessel or a physical manifistation at all (in any conceivable way at least) but that also leads back to the univursal.....evidence of absence vs absence of evidence.....and thats a hole nother argument.....


nothing has to be tangable to exist.
this is only what we are used to thinking in terms of.

the last argument of a logically taxed religion....and its not a bad one....

[Columbo]

Our physical selves are that energy slowed down to a rate visible to the eye Exactly how fast was it travelling and is the speed of ourselves constant, if it is constant and you have made notes of the measurements you have taken, you may have discovered a new universal law of nature. If you could explain this further? the scientific world may be able to base a whole branch of science around any observations you have made.
How does this slowed down energy slow itself down? Does it use the earths gravity or the suns? or maybe some different slowing mechanism?
Could we use that energy to fuel our cars and would it be cleaner than fossil fuel. I am just wondering how this energy leaves no traces too that has ever been picked up by instrumentation.

[peacefulwind14]

The mind cannot exist without the brain. That is obviously true. But does mind only mean brain? If the mind is only physical processes from inside and outside the organism, doesn't things like logic and reason get relativized? We could have developed differently, no one will deny that, so if ideal validities like the laws of logic are relativized (they are just contingencies) how can we say anything is true?

Also, I can imagine things. Consciousness isn't causal; it's intentional. There was no outside sense data to create my imaginary object. Now, you can say "of course not, but there was neurochemicals in your brain that allowed for that experience!" But did they "choose" to have that experience? If so, then it seems like we're bordering on determinism.

[Columbo]

maybe this will help decide the question

http://illuminations.berkeley.edu/archives/2005/article.php?volume=3&story=1

[themnax]

i would have to say to the same extent that your computer's opperating system is part of it's physical hardware! which, after all it isn't. however much it may be dependent upon the hardware's existence for it to run on.

but i also feel, have always felt, that a distinction needs to be made here between awairness and mind. just as with you computer system there is hardware and software, there is a third eliment, that is the whole point and reason for the hardware and software of that box you're setting in front of, and that is YOU, the "end user".

so where is the 'end user' in the mind-brain system? obviously, procceeding from the analogy, an equivelant true self or awairness must of neccessity be outside of the system to BE an end user using it. given an opperating system so user transparent that it is possible to not realize an interface is there, it becomes readily understandable that such a distinction is seldom even immagined, let alone considered.

yes memory is a function of brain, and the software that stores experiences, rom-like in it. but is this of neccessity an indication that awairness is not a thing appart and thus not entirely dependent upon or derived from it?

i'm not claiming a difinative answer, and i can certainly understand the suspectness of what may appear to resemble too closely what many may wish, yet neither is this a compelling reason to rule out an intreguiging possibility entirely.

that our memories, or at least the brain's storage of them, may be as effemeral as our organic substance, yet if, nontangable awairnessess are capable of existing, are not our own, likewise capable of doing so in that manor?

like i say, i don't believe anyone can really be absolutely certain of this, one way or the other, but, well i have more then gut feelings and wishful thinking to suspect this might well be the case.

it has to do with a kind of 'para-memories' to coin a phraise, some of us seem to be born with. and the question that arrises as to where did, could they have, come from?

=^^=
.../\...

[chocolatechipcookie]

Hello everybody, thread revisited :)
I truly believe in consciousness and, especially spirit by now.
just a few questions remind unanswered:
If we are matter and the matter is energy, we have an argument truly ancient: Demokritos, who first discovered "atoms" or particles truly unbreakable, believed that all it is arround us is composed of these particles. some unknown force (lets call it god) would give movement to these particles. and just like browns effect, they keep moving. however, how much energy could such potential particle transfer? therefore lets believe that there is a vacuum in the universe for a reason. the radiation is a good explanation for extra movement of the smallest parts of an atom.
(this could explain not exactly how energy slows down, but how it recycles itself)
another question of consciousness is ethics, which I would like to discuss further. just how conscious have we become, for whoever believes in evolution? too much morals for a bacteria?
another question is our imagination. it is a great point that it is operating freely from our visual world, but just how free it can get, has anyone ever imagined anything we have not seen with our very eyes?

[TomDijon]

stonerbill, i looked for it and found it, and then i kinda lost it. i mean, it's still there, but not as firmly grasped as it could have been. if you want to, don't force it
take it slow

[themnax]

Hello everybody, thread revisited :)
I truly believe in consciousness and, especially spirit by now.
just a few questions remind unanswered:
If we are matter and the matter is energy, we have an argument truly ancient: Demokritos, who first discovered "atoms" or particles truly unbreakable, believed that all it is arround us is composed of these particles. some unknown force (lets call it god) would give movement to these particles. and just like browns effect, they keep moving. however, how much energy could such potential particle transfer? therefore lets believe that there is a vacuum in the universe for a reason. the radiation is a good explanation for extra movement of the smallest parts of an atom.
(this could explain not exactly how energy slows down, but how it recycles itself)
another question of consciousness is ethics, which I would like to discuss further. just how conscious have we become, for whoever believes in evolution? too much morals for a bacteria?
another question is our imagination. it is a great point that it is operating freely from our visual world, but just how free it can get, has anyone ever imagined anything we have not seen with our very eyes?

and if we are NOT matter, which is my position, but only interface with it, through an opperating system and applications called mind ...

we are none the less responsible, and feel, and experience, what we create of this tangable world in the proccess

and yes i've experienced in my immagination and dreams, kinds of spaces and things, ineret and otherwise, which my, not to be over modest about it, somewhat extensive vocabulary, lacks words and phraises to translate into.

=^^=
.../\...

[enter`name`here]

I propose that current knowledge of both mind and body (specifically the brain) is inadequate to say for certain what the exact relationship is between the two. At best all we can say is that the two seem to influence each..