The Invisible Links Between the Mind and the Matter
Overview
We can understand the totality of our existence in terms of four domains.
We can understand the totality of our existence in terms of the following four domains i.e., material, interpersonal, personal, and transpersonal.
Sigmund Freud wrote about a hundred years ago that there cannot be psychology without biology, meaning the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain, connecting the material domain with the rest three domains. A corollary to that would be that the mind can be fully understood through scientific investigations. Out of this notion grew an understanding that every thought had a molecule in our brain, and medicine one day will be able to solve all our psychological problems by studying the molecules.
Four domains
We can understand the totality of our existence in terms of the following four domains i.e., material, interpersonal, personal, and transpersonal.
Sigmund Freud wrote about a hundred years ago that there cannot be psychology without biology, meaning the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain, connecting the material domain with the rest three domains. A corollary to that would be that the mind can be fully understood through scientific investigations. Out of this notion grew an understanding that every thought had a molecule in our brain, and medicine one day will be able to solve all our psychological problems by studying the molecules.
Ancient Indian scriptures take a different view on this subject. According to Hinduism and Buddhism, the whole of the body is inside the mind, but the whole of the mind is not inside the body. Patanjali yoga sutra states, “the mind is not a projection of the body, but the body is a projection of the mind. The mind does not follow the body, but the body follows the mind.”
Panpsychism
A new research field, described as Panpsychism, is consistent with the ancient Indian concepts and is turning scientific notions upside down. Hedda Hasell Morch argues that “Rather than fret over how the hardware of brains gives rise to the software of consciousness, we could find peace by reversing the order.” [1] that the hardware of the brain is written by the software (consciousness) of the mind. We are the masters of our bodies and not the slaves.
However, the hard problem of consciousness so far has been how to explain our subjective experiences, and some scientists have concluded that a part of the mind cannot be studied scientifically as it does not follow scientific laws.
Panpsychism postulates that consciousness is embedded in matter itself, as a fundamental property of the universe, and is present in every material object. Our understanding of the material world has changed in recent decades because of the advances in quantum physics.
Tam Hunt asks whether electrons may be conscious,[2] and Johannas Kliener, a mathematician and physicist, appearing on the cover of May 2020 New Scientist has asked – is the universe conscious? Quantum mechanics tells us that particles have determinate positions only when measured.[3] Philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead have also drawn on the indeterminacy observed by quantum physics to defend Panpsychism.
One can find similar knowledge in ancient Indian scriptures, declaring that consciousness pervades everything. God is omnipresent and all beings are connected with each other through the medium of energy fields, and the energy fields of the animate and inanimate objects are in constant interactions with each other. If we have lived at a certain place for a long, we leave behind our vibrations/energy fields which can be felt by someone else when they visit the place, hence the idea of pilgrimage. Suggesting that bits of our consciousness are retained in the physical matter. That is why CEOs do not like when someone else habitually sits on their chair to work.
Some people are not comfortable with the thought that someone else is constantly keeping their photographs in their possession as if it were a bad omen, and harm will come to them, more so when the other person is not their well-wisher. We tend to imagine that if someone is cursing us with our photo in front of them it is going to be more harmful.
However, the opposite of it can also be true, your photo in possession of a well-wisher can do you some good. When they are wishing you well and praying for you and your photo is in front of them or your mental image is in their mind, their prayers will be much stronger. In meditation traditions, they encourage you to wish people well by keeping their image, which could be visual or auditory, in your mind as it can make your wishes stronger.
Perhaps that is the reason we see people keep the photograph of their family members on their office desks, a way of remembering their loved ones, and looking at their photos can make their love grow stronger. Or perhaps keeping the photo in front of them is a mental reaction to reinforce one’s feelings for their loved ones.
Jung has mentioned, in one of his YouTube videos, an example of a king who was terminally ill, and just at the point of his death, the clock in his room stopped ticking. Sometimes an object related to the person breaks down when there is a beak in one’s feelings towards that person, or there is a break in that person’s feelings towards you.
I saw my father saying goodbye to the house he had lived in for fifty years by kissing a pillar in the porch area when it was sold. I also bid farewell to my car when I left for England in 1996 as if I were saying goodbye to a friend. Perhaps there is a consciousness in there making us do those things.
Killian Fox has described strange happenings in the British Museum
Killian Fox has described strange happenings in the British Museum – such as heavy doors opening spontaneously soon after being locked, sudden drops in temperature, and the sudden sound of footsteps, music or crying when no obvious source can be found.
One night a security guard was passing through the African gallery in the basement and paused before the figure of a two-headed dog, the guard believed that this 19th-century wooden Congolese fetish bristling with rough iron nails possessed some mysterious power, and he felt an irresistible urge to point a finger at this object, as he did so the fire alarms in the gallery went off, a few days later the guard returned to the gallery, and again pointed a finger at the two-headed dog, again the alarm sounded.[4] The same article has described the fact that- people exhibit an irresistible urge to touch museum artefacts knowing it’s illegal. The camera has captured objects in the British Museum that did not exist in the Museum – attributed to the presence of Orb, noted even in the CCTV.
An Exhibition named – Germany: memories of a Nation – ran from October 2014 to January 2015 in the British Museum, white coloured orbs were captured on camera moving around a white wartime gate from the concentration camp at Buchenwald which bore the motto “Jedem das the Seine” meaning – to each what he deserves. The Orbs appeared each night until the exhibition ended. The guard said when the German exhibition ended, they went away.[4] it is easy to understand that objects hold energy which can manifest in diverse ways.
Along the same lines, one can see that the cleanliness of one’s environment is an extension of the mind, the conflict-free consciousness instinctively engages with the surroundings and starts cleaning, as if the object or space was inviting you to clean it, this happens at the pre-cognitive level, Just as a mother hands start caring for the new-born instinctively, no thinking is involved.
I used to make fun of a family member who used to look after gadgets the way one looks after one’s children. My argument was that every device or electronic gadget has a lifespan and there is no need to make a constant effort to extend their lifespan the way you do with human beings. But I can now see the wisdom in treating the objects, that we use every day, with care and affection, as without them life will become difficult.
Jung used to say that physical objects in your environment have a way of hiding themselves from us at certain points in time. The thing is lying in front of you, but you cannot see it at a certain point in time after a few hours, it is sitting there right in front of you looking at you mockingly, inviting you and showing its intention to participate in your life. Obviously, we cannot attribute all such happenings to Panpsychism, as problems with our attention can also contribute to it.
Jung’s assertion that things hide from us may not apply in many situations, it may be that our consciousness was taken up entirely by our own conflicts, emotions, and perceptions of certain objects. It is often seen that after deep meditation or a healing therapy session, one suddenly becomes aware of objects, which were already there in the surroundings, in a unique way. This happens as a part of our consciousness, after becoming free of the conflicts, starts to notice very subtle details in the surroundings – the veins on the leaves of a plant, flowers looking more vivid, the grain of the wood in the furniture starts shining through the filters of our perception, individual threads in the fabric of the clothes one is wearing, the minute imperfections of the paint on the wall become noticeable.
Sometimes I wonder how much energy is hidden inside the transparent air that surrounds us – the radio waves, television broadcast, Wi-Fi connection, high voltage electricity that is known to cause health problems if the house is near electrical installations, prayers that people send out to their gods, divine grace the descent from above onto us, light waves that enable us to see things, an emotion that travels from one person’s mind to that of another just by looking at them, the energy that gets transferred to a new-born when the mother starts singing a lullaby to him etc. The physical environment is imbued with so much energy, and it is difficult to think that the contents inside the body and the ones outside the body are impervious to each other.
Quantum physics tells us that the very process of observation of the phenomena, object or activity changes its characteristic. It is very much like watching a child, the child knows that he is being watched, and changes his behaviour. With the child, you can still observe his natural behaviour if you make sure that he is not aware of it. But with the physical environment, the psychic energy of our attention that touches the energy of a material object immediately starts interacting with the energy field of the object and changes its characteristics.
Applied to human interactions, we find that simply the way we approach a person changes their behaviour towards us, not just by our outward behaviour, but our mental attitude towards the person even though the actual behaviour is not manifest yet, affects the other person’s attitude.
A few years ago, there were some reports that keeping your mobile phone in a pocket close to your chest can affect your heart and keeping it next to your face while sleeping can affect your brain, as the mobile phone is constantly emitting energy. I am not sure what became of that research.
There are also reports that with some people their electronic gadgets do not last very long, whether it is because of the impact of that person’s energy field affecting the functioning of the energy patterns within the device or just a physical abuse of the device has not been studied scientifically.
References
- Morch, H.H., Is Matter Conscious? Why the central problem in neuroscience is mirrored in physics., in Nautilus. 2020: New York.
- Hunt, T., Electrons may well be conscious. Nautilus, 2020. June 9.
- Goff, P., Panpsychism is crazy, but it is also most probably true, in Aeon. 2017, Aeon Media Group: Australia
- Fox, K., Are Ghosts haunting the British Museum, in 1843 Magazine. 2020, The Economist Group: United Kingdom.
We can understand the totality of our existence in terms of the following four domains i.e., material, interpersonal, personal, and transpersonal.
Sigmund Freud wrote about a hundred years ago that there cannot be psychology without biology, meaning the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain, connecting the material domain with the rest three domains. A corollary to that would be that the mind can be fully understood through scientific investigations. Out of this notion grew an understanding that every thought had a molecule in our brain, and medicine one day will be able to solve all our psychological problems by studying the molecules.
Ancient Indian scriptures take a different view on this subject. According to Hinduism and Buddhism, the whole of the body is inside the mind, but the whole of the mind is not inside the body. Patanjali yoga sutra states, “the mind is not a projection of the body, but the body is a projection of the mind. The mind does not follow the body, but the body follows the mind.”
Panpsychism
A new research field, described as Panpsychism, is consistent with the ancient Indian concepts and is turning scientific notions upside down. Hedda Hasell Morch argues that “Rather than fret over how the hardware of brains gives rise to the software of consciousness, we could find peace by reversing the order.” [1] that the hardware of the brain is written by the software (consciousness) of the mind. We are the masters of our bodies and not the slaves.
However, the hard problem of consciousness so far has been how to explain our subjective experiences, and some scientists have concluded that a part of the mind cannot be studied scientifically as it does not follow scientific laws.
Panpsychism postulates that consciousness is embedded in matter itself, as a fundamental property of the universe, and is present in every material object. Our understanding of the material world has changed in recent decades because of the advances in quantum physics.
Tam Hunt asks whether electrons may be conscious,[2] and Johannas Kliener, a mathematician and physicist, appearing on the cover of May 2020 New Scientist has asked – is the universe conscious? Quantum mechanics tells us that particles have determinate positions only when measured.[3] Philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead have also drawn on the indeterminacy observed by quantum physics to defend Panpsychism.
One can find similar knowledge in ancient Indian scriptures, declaring that consciousness pervades everything. God is omnipresent and all beings are connected with each other through the medium of energy fields, and the energy fields of the animate and inanimate objects are in constant interactions with each other. If we have lived at a certain place for a long, we leave behind our vibrations/energy fields which can be felt by someone else when they visit the place, hence the idea of pilgrimage. Suggesting that bits of our consciousness are retained in the physical matter. That is why CEOs do not like when someone else habitually sits on their chair to work.
Some people are not comfortable with the thought that someone else is constantly keeping their photographs in their possession as if it were a bad omen, and harm will come to them, more so when the other person is not their well-wisher. We tend to imagine that if someone is cursing us with our photo in front of them it is going to be more harmful.
However, the opposite of it can also be true, your photo in possession of a well-wisher can do you some good. When they are wishing you well and praying for you and your photo is in front of them or your mental image is in their mind, their prayers will be much stronger. In meditation traditions, they encourage you to wish people well by keeping their image, which could be visual or auditory, in your mind as it can make your wishes stronger.
Perhaps that is the reason we see people keep the photograph of their family members on their office desks, a way of remembering their loved ones, and looking at their photos can make their love grow stronger. Or perhaps keeping the photo in front of them is a mental reaction to reinforce one’s feelings for their loved ones.
Jung has mentioned, in one of his YouTube videos, an example of a king who was terminally ill, and just at the point of his death, the clock in his room stopped ticking. Sometimes an object related to the person breaks down when there is a beak in one’s feelings towards that person, or there is a break in that person’s feelings towards you.
I saw my father saying goodbye to the house he had lived in for fifty years by kissing a pillar in the porch area when it was sold. I also bid farewell to my car when I left for England in 1996 as if I were saying goodbye to a friend. Perhaps there is a consciousness in there making us do those things.
Killian Fox has described strange happenings in the British Museum
Killian Fox has described strange happenings in the British Museum – such as heavy doors opening spontaneously soon after being locked, sudden drops in temperature, and the sudden sound of footsteps, music or crying when no obvious source can be found.
One night a security guard was passing through the African gallery in the basement and paused before the figure of a two-headed dog, the guard believed that this 19th-century wooden Congolese fetish bristling with rough iron nails possessed some mysterious power, and he felt an irresistible urge to point a finger at this object, as he did so the fire alarms in the gallery went off, a few days later the guard returned to the gallery, and again pointed a finger at the two-headed dog, again the alarm sounded.[4] The same article has described the fact that- people exhibit an irresistible urge to touch museum artefacts knowing it’s illegal. The camera has captured objects in the British Museum that did not exist in the Museum – attributed to the presence of Orb, noted even in the CCTV.
An Exhibition named – Germany: memories of a Nation – ran from October 2014 to January 2015 in the British Museum, white coloured orbs were captured on camera moving around a white wartime gate from the concentration camp at Buchenwald which bore the motto “Jedem das the Seine” meaning – to each what he deserves. The Orbs appeared each night until the exhibition ended. The guard said when the German exhibition ended, they went away.[4] it is easy to understand that objects hold energy which can manifest in diverse ways.
Along the same lines, one can see that the cleanliness of one’s environment is an extension of the mind, the conflict-free consciousness instinctively engages with the surroundings and starts cleaning, as if the object or space was inviting you to clean it, this happens at the pre-cognitive level, Just as a mother hands start caring for the new-born instinctively, no thinking is involved.
I used to make fun of a family member who used to look after gadgets the way one looks after one’s children. My argument was that every device or electronic gadget has a lifespan and there is no need to make a constant effort to extend their lifespan the way you do with human beings. But I can now see the wisdom in treating the objects, that we use every day, with care and affection, as without them life will become difficult.
Jung used to say that physical objects in your environment have a way of hiding themselves from us at certain points in time. The thing is lying in front of you, but you cannot see it at a certain point in time after a few hours, it is sitting there right in front of you looking at you mockingly, inviting you and showing its intention to participate in your life. Obviously, we cannot attribute all such happenings to Panpsychism, as problems with our attention can also contribute to it.
Jung’s assertion that things hide from us may not apply in many situations, it may be that our consciousness was taken up entirely by our own conflicts, emotions, and perceptions of certain objects. It is often seen that after deep meditation or a healing therapy session, one suddenly becomes aware of objects, which were already there in the surroundings, in a unique way. This happens as a part of our consciousness, after becoming free of the conflicts, starts to notice very subtle details in the surroundings – the veins on the leaves of a plant, flowers looking more vivid, the grain of the wood in the furniture starts shining through the filters of our perception, individual threads in the fabric of the clothes one is wearing, the minute imperfections of the paint on the wall become noticeable.
Sometimes I wonder how much energy is hidden inside the transparent air that surrounds us – the radio waves, television broadcast, Wi-Fi connection, high voltage electricity that is known to cause health problems if the house is near electrical installations, prayers that people send out to their gods, divine grace the descent from above onto us, light waves that enable us to see things, an emotion that travels from one person’s mind to that of another just by looking at them, the energy that gets transferred to a new-born when the mother starts singing a lullaby to him etc. The physical environment is imbued with so much energy, and it is difficult to think that the contents inside the body and the ones outside the body are impervious to each other.
Quantum physics tells us that the very process of observation of the phenomena, object or activity changes its characteristic. It is very much like watching a child, the child knows that he is being watched, and changes his behaviour. With the child, you can still observe his natural behaviour if you make sure that he is not aware of it. But with the physical environment, the psychic energy of our attention that touches the energy of a material object immediately starts interacting with the energy field of the object and changes its characteristics.
Applied to human interactions, we find that simply the way we approach a person changes their behaviour towards us, not just by our outward behaviour, but our mental attitude towards the person even though the actual behaviour is not manifest yet, affects the other person’s attitude.
A few years ago, there were some reports that keeping your mobile phone in a pocket close to your chest can affect your heart and keeping it next to your face while sleeping can affect your brain, as the mobile phone is constantly emitting energy. I am not sure what became of that research.
There are also reports that with some people their electronic gadgets do not last very long, whether it is because of the impact of that person’s energy field affecting the functioning of the energy patterns within the device or just a physical abuse of the device has not been studied scientifically.
References
- Morch, H.H., Is Matter Conscious? Why the central problem in neuroscience is mirrored in physics., in Nautilus. 2020: New York.
- Hunt, T., Electrons may well be conscious. Nautilus, 2020. June 9.
- Goff, P., Panpsychism is crazy, but it is also most probably true, in Aeon. 2017, Aeon Media Group: Australia
- Fox, K., Are Ghosts haunting the British Museum, in 1843 Magazine. 2020, The Economist Group: United Kingdom.
