What Problem?

I can't wait for the Professor forever, so what the hey, might as well keep my education educated and updated. Here I go again, this time starting with more emphasis on my previous Jungian psychology education added to this paper.




Mind/Body Problem








Mind/Body Problem? No Problem.
Maurice S. Keating, Jr.
University of Phoenix
Abstract:
A discourse on the Cartesian mind body problem, comparing recent Western physiopsychology with Eastern Kundalini Yoga perspectives.

Mind/Body Problem? No Problem.
I, [insert name here], being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath all my…. Such are the words of a Last Will and Testament made by many American’s in today’s society, indicating the Cartesian duality of mind (mental faculties), and physical body. That both mind and body must be without impairment for the document to be valid, indicates acknowledgement of interactionist thought, that either one can affect the other’s state of being (Goodwin, 2005, p. 29). Certainly the body houses the mind, as thought procesess develop along with the body and generally they cease together, except in such cases of comatose, but what is consciousness and where in the body exists conscious awareness, since awareness comes in from all the body’s senses? If Cartesian dichotomy is more then just theory, does consciousness exist beyond the body’s awarenss, in opposite case senarios of coma’s? The purpose of this paper to briefly examine what is consciousness, where does mind exist in relation to the body and to explore the idea of thte psyche’s transendance above and beyond the body’s physicality and influence.
Everyone knows what thinking is, what it does, and that thinking is a function of the mind, because after all everyone is born with a brain! Everyone knows that is, except the philosophers and psychologists who consider the very origins of thought, of how thinking occurs. Atomists, relativists, rationalists, existentionalists, religionists and all others have a seemingly valid point of view that carries certain weight when one is given specific examples of reference, but all of these perspectives seem incomplete and at odds with one another, dissociated to ordianry lay people not well versed in such studies. Perhaps this occurs due to the very dichotomy of Western thought expressed by the mind versus body duality of Descarte’s Cartesian model previously mentioned. With that in mind, let us direct our attention Eastward to Indian Buddism and Hinduism, where mind and body are thought of as a whole, not in opposition to each other, but part of a totality complimenting each individual.
Kundalini yoga gives mind, consciousness, or awareness, seven specific locations withing the human body called; chakra’s, that correspond physiologically to the brain and six major ganglia along the spinal column of the central nervous system. “The chakras are great force centers or nerve ganglia in the physical body, the astral body and the body of the soul” (Hinduism Today, 1994). The seven chakra’s of the ganglia and brain are connected by nerves to various organs throughout the body, and awareness, or psychic energy, is focused sequentially from the lower chakra at birth and is elevated through physical and mental development during the course of one’s life. This development of the individual personality directed towards wholeness is discussed in Carl G. Jung’s book; The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga (1996). This work of Jung’s lead to his subsequent theory of The Process of Individuation, as expostulated in; The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, vol. 9 part 1 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (1959). The devotion of a Yogi’s life to meditation and contemplation leading to completeness of awareness and the individuation of a Western person through dream analysis of unconscious contents leading to wholeness, are two paths to the same goal. Differences in the two paths are the Yogi’s conscious awareness of the process and attendant physical training such as unites mind and body to a degree that enables a fakir to lay on a bed of nails, hold one’s breath underwater for extended periods, and other such astounding feats of bodily contortion that are well known.
The goal of meditation and individuation is not merely increased self awareness, but unity and a oneness within and without; reaching as Jung states: “the ajna center, the state of complete consciousness, not only self consciousness. That would be an exceedingly extended consciousness which includes everything – energy itself – a consciousness which knows not only ‘That is Thou’ but more then that – that every tree, every stone, every breath of air, every rat’s tail – all that is yourself; there is nothing that is not yourself” (Jung, 1996, p. 59). A state of synchronicity, as Jung later developed this idea of ajna into, is achieved, whereby the student becomes one with the University and the Universe!
References:
CHAKRAS. (1994, April). Hinduism Today, 16(4), 14. Retrieved February 18, 2008, from Alt-Press Watch (APW) database. (Document ID: 611055281).

Goodwin, C. G. (2005). A History of Modern Psychology. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Jung, C. G. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9, part 1). New York: Bollingen Foundation, Inc.

Jung, C. G. (1996). The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.