René Descartes

Is There An Organ In Your Brain Which Seats Your Soul?

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“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light…” Matthew 6:22-23

A Gateway To Between The Physical And Metaphysical?

pinealGlandJeffrey Roberts – Situated at the anatomical center of our brain lies a mysterious gland that may be the intermediary gate that bridges our physical and spiritual experiences here on Earth.

Seventeenth-Century French philosopher Rene Descartes coined this organ, called the pineal gland, as the “seat of the soul”, as he believed it provided people with a medium from which our soul could be expressed through our physicality.

The pineal gland has been a topic of great debate over the past couple of decades as the science community is still trying to discover its complete biological function. Dr. Rick Strassman, M.D., author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, has dedicated years of research to the pineal gland as he suggests that this gland is the factory for a powerful brain chemical called DMT (Di-Methyl Tryptamine) which when produced induces a person into a psychedelic and mystical experience.

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Wrapping Up Suppression Of Harmonics By The Catholic Church, Part 3

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“But while an honest look at European history seemed to explain how and why harmonic principles had disappeared from Western religion, it still did not answer why science, as the presumed pillar of empirical truth in the world, did not eventually return to harmonic science as a unifying field of study. So I dug a little deeper and here is what I found.” – R Merrick

The anti-harmonic campaign

Music_NotesSpectrum“During the run up to The Enlightenment in the late 17th and 18th centuries the ‘scientific method’ had actually been designed to discourage the study of harmonics and its corresponding natural philosophy known as musica universalis.

“I learned that the exclusion of music and pagan harmonic principles from modern science was first suggested in a letter from the astronomer Galileo to his daughter, apparently prompted by his inner conflict of faith and understandable desire to avoid torture and imprisonment by the Italian Inquisition. Continue reading →

Descartes and Western Individualism

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BATR  September 9 2013

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” – Rene Descartes

Cartesian doubtThe philosophical condemnation of the supremacy in individual liberty versus the reigning doctrine of collective dominance, is a primary cause for the destruction of Western Civilization principles. Rene Descartes preferred to do his radical doubt thinking in solitude. In today’s society, thinking is about as foreign as rational behavior. In order to understand the timeless values and precepts that fostered the underpinnings of our Western thought and heritage, the significance of Descartes needs a close examination.

Jorn K. Bramann, PhD in The Educating Rita Workbook is the source reference for the Descartes: The Solitary Self essay. This excellent treatise deserves your full attention.

“There are two cultural legacies of lasting importance that Descartes’ radical separation of the mind from the physical world has left—two philosophical conceptions of reality that found expression in how Europeans related to their environment, and how they perceived their over-all existence in the world.

The one legacy fastens on the absolute sovereignty of the mind vis-à-vis everything that is not mind. While the external world, including the thinker’s body, is subject to the laws of physics and other external contingencies, the mind is not. I, being pure mind, enjoy a supreme degree of independence from my body and everything physical.

The radical separation of mind and body–and of the mental and the physical in general–is known as “Cartesian Dualism.” And by attributing to the mind something like sovereignty over the external physical world, it has prepared the way for a distinctly modern conception and experience of reality, a conception which replaced older ways of seeing the world in drastic ways.

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Will We Ever Understand Consciousness?

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Zen-Haven June 1 2013

As you read this sentence, the millions of neurons in your brain are frantically whispering to each other, resulting in the experience of conscious awareness.

The nature of consciousness has intrigued philosophers and scientists for thousands of years. But can modern neuroscience ever hope to crack this mysterious phenomenon? At the World Science Festival, an annual celebration and exploration of science held here in New York, a panel of experts debated what scientists can and can’t learn about the mind by studying the brain.

Philosophy of the mind

Plenty of great minds have pondered the meaning of consciousness over the ages, said philosopher Colin McGinn of the University of Miami. The 17th-century French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes famously introduced the notion of mind-body dualism, which holds that the world of the body is fundamentally separate from the world of the mind, or soul, although the two may interact.

In the 19th century, the English biologist Thomas Huxley helped develop the theory of epiphenomenalism, the idea that physical events in the brain give rise to mental phenomena. On the panel, McGinn also talked about panpsychism, the view that the universe is made of minds. [Watch a replay of the program here]

McGinn himself believes that no matter how much scientists study the brain, the mind is fundamentally incapable of comprehending itself. “We’re rather like Neanderthals trying to understand astronomy or Shakespeare,” McGinn said. Human brains suffer from a “cognitive gap” in understanding their own consciousness, he said.

Panelist Christof Koch, a neuroscientist and chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, took issue with McGinn’s view. “I think it’s a defeatist argument,” Koch said. His rebuttal was as colorful as his outfit — a flamboyant Hawaiian shirt and orange pants. “Historically, philosophers have a disastrous record of explaining things,” Koch said. Philosophers are very good at asking questions, he said, but not so good at finding satisfactory answers.

Searching for answers

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