Saturday, May 2, 2009

The human mind and soul

Mind Body Soul is a philosophy which envelopes the infinite knowledge available in the universe.
"What is 'mind'? What is 'soul'? Is there a greater 'mind' out there, and where is reincarnation in all this?"
The soul is the place where we feel pleasure. The mind is the place where we calculate how to receive the pleasure.
I generally think of myself as an embodied mind, but then when I further reflect, that is a thought, and I can think of 'the' self as being that thought or series of thoughts that do the reflecting - thus the self is a part of mind. Generally, as far as I can see the soul used to function as a synonym for mind in the sense that it was the 'immaterial' part or aspect of a person. Once the brain was identified as the 'seat' of the mind, the soul came to have a religious, third element sort of connotation.

The soul tells the mind what the pleasure should be, and the mind then has to work, like a calculator, on how that desire should be fulfilled.
If you take the time to analyze your desires, you'll discover that they are aimed at transient things - things which will eventually die away. Perhaps a moment enters here and there where you contemplate the eternal, but this moment is always followed by drives for transient things.
There is no eternal soul until we attain one in this lifetime, through working on our desire until we really want an eternal soul. Then, this desire expands our mind: it starts calculating how to fulfill this desire with eternal life.

Vivek Kumar

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