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INTELLIGENCE, or consciousness. In common understanding, a rational being is a being that perceives, thinks, learns, has desires and emotions, makes free choices and demonstrates purposeful behavior. Philosophical and scientific theories of the mind attempt to understand the nature of this psychic (or mental) activity and its characteristics, as well as the nature of the self or conscious subject who carries out this activity.

Research into these problems has been influenced by developments in brain science, logic and computing, microelectronics, and philosophy of science. The essence of modern theories becomes clearer if we turn to the history of the concept of mind (consciousness) and those concepts that led to the current level of theoretical ideas.

Theories of antiquity.

In ancient times, mental phenomena were considered to belong to all of nature. The behavior of the sea, weather, rivers, as well as the sun and moon - all this was explained by the desires and whims of the spirits who seemed to inhabit these phenomena. The sea showed anger, took revenge for the neglectful attitude towards itself; the sun distributed seasonal portions of warmth, making gifts from time to time; rain carefully poured onto the ground in response to ritual requests. This humanization of nature is called animism. Animism attempts to explain the behavior of all things in terms that typically characterize actions in relation to humans and relatively complex living things.

In the 5th century BC Ancient Greek philosophers proposed purely physical and mechanical explanations of natural phenomena. Only the behavior of humans and animals began to be explained in terms of mental activity. However, this raised the question: “What distinguishes conscious, sentient, intelligent beings from all others?”

In the Latin translation of the Greek. pneuma – spiritus. The concept of spirit as something ephemeral, spreading over matter and giving it new properties, reappears in the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the theories of medieval alchemists about chemical transformations.

The theories of the Stoics and Plato are an example of substance dualism: the mind is an individual substance that has a non-physical nature. Aristotle's view is an example of attributive dualism: instead of separate kinds of substances, there are separate kinds of properties. Finally, Democritus' theory is an example of materialism, which believes that all things, as well as all properties, ultimately have a physical nature.

Theories of the Renaissance and Modern Times.

During the late Renaissance, European thinkers surpassed the Greeks in astronomy, physics, and physiology. The cumulative result of their work was an essentially mechanical understanding of most natural phenomena, and the question of the place of mind in the Universe once again arose. R. Descartes (1596–1650) proposed a new, more radical form of substance dualism. From his point of view, the mind does not have spatial extension, which is the very essence of matter. To this new idea he added one more: the mind is capable of clear and distinct comprehension, a perfect understanding of its own nature. The essence of reason, according to Descartes, lies in the activity of thinking, the ability to reason.

As one might guess, Descartes had difficulty explaining how a systematic interaction between a non-spatial mind and a completely mechanical body was possible. He postulated the presence of "animal spirits" (more "substantial" than mind, and more subtle than ordinary matter) as intermediaries between mind and matter. Descartes considered the location of interaction to be the pineal gland in the lower central part of the brain. However, no one found this theory satisfactory. The idea of ​​a non-physical mind influencing a mechanical brain also violated the laws of conservation of momentum and kinetic energy. Descartes was aware of some of these problems, but could not solve them.

Another theory was proposed by J. La Mettrie (1709–1751). Based on the latest discoveries of physiologists, he agreed with Descartes that the so-called. The "vital" forces of animals and humans can be explained in purely physical terms. However, La Mettrie went further: from his point of view, the mental activity that distinguishes man is also a purely physical phenomenon. In an anonymously published essay Man-machine(1748) La Mettrie revived Democritus's idea that at the basis of all life and mental activity, including Cartesian rational thinking, there is nothing other than the complex organization of matter. While putting forward convincing arguments in favor of this thesis, he was unable to give any specific explanation cognitive activity. La Mettrie's book was often reviled because it was considered offensive from a religious point of view. However, gradually the bonds that bound thinking weakened.

While the materialists sought to reduce consciousness to matter, the idealists tried to carry out a reduction of the opposite kind. Idealism is the view that matter does not exist independently of consciousness. Consciousness is the only reality, and matter exists only in the sense that certain images systematically arise in human consciousness (subjective idealism) or perhaps in divine consciousness (objective idealism). The physical world is like a dream, miraculous either to man or to God. The most characteristic representative of this view is considered to be J. Berkeley (1685–1753).

I. Kant (1724–1804) made an important contribution to discussions about reason. In his Critique of Pure Reason(1781) he argued that human perception of the external world is to a large extent determined by the activity of the mind, since the forms of sensibility and categories of understanding bring the necessary order to the chaos of “raw” sensory material. Therefore, the material objects of our experience may be empirically real—real to all human experience—but they are not necessarily real in a transcendental sense, from God's point of view. What reality-in-itself is like remains unknown and incomprehensible to man.

Kant believed that the world of inner feelings, thoughts and sensations and other attributes of the mind are equally its constructions. The mind's contact with itself is also mediated by structural and conceptual patterns and is therefore no more direct than contact with the rest of the world. Reason is accessible to itself only through apperceptions. Accordingly, what the mind-in-itself looks like remains unknown and incomprehensible to humans. This is a direct denial of Descartes' thesis that the mind directly knows its own nature. Thus, Kant is an atypical idealist. He does not insist that reason underlies reality. The fundamental components of reality—things-in-themselves—remain unknown.

Kant's position was fundamental to the theory of mind, since it allowed that the true nature of mental phenomena may be different from what it appears to be, and denied introspection the right to judge the true nature of the mind and its various activities. The next step was taken by Kant’s compatriot, G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), who developed the idea that, despite the correctness of Kant’s statement about the opacity of reason to itself, reason is nevertheless capable of moving towards the comprehension of its true nature. Hegel saw a plasticity in the tools of knowledge that Kant did not see. Through science, reflection and the development of concepts, Hegel argued, reason could someday hope to achieve the truth about itself.

THEORIES OF THE PAST CENTURY

Dualistic theories.

The position of substance dualism, although widely popular, is shared by few professional philosophers and scientists. The reason for this is partly the success of the materialist research program, partly the inability of substance dualism to make theoretical and experimental progress. So far they have not offered an explanation of how thinking and feeling arise. Difficulties regarding the mechanisms and even the very possibility of interaction between soul and body have also not been resolved. If the immaterial soul truly served as the basis of reason and self-awareness, and its dependence on the brain was limited only to sensory input and volitional output, then the functioning of reason and self-awareness would be almost independent of possible damage to the brain or attempts to manipulate it. However, this contradicts the actual state of affairs. Cell degeneration in brain diseases and effects chemicals can completely destroy the ability to think. A simple blow to the head can not only render a person unable to perceive the outside world, but also destroy his ability to be self-aware. All this is not surprising if we consider consciousness to be a function of the brain, but it makes no sense if we consider it to be a function of something completely different.

Attributional dualism fares better than substance dualism. In any case, some philosophers are ready to subscribe to one of its two versions. From the point of view of "epiphenomenalism", intelligent behavior is entirely caused by the activity of the brain, but some non-physical properties of the brain (which do not play any causal role in behavior) are by-products of its physical activity. Among them are various characteristics of the mental kind. Epiphenomenalism was proposed by T. Huxley (1825–1895) as a compromise between two contradictory motives: to really give scientific explanation behavior and respect the equally real but immaterial experience of human introspection. Many consider this attempt at compromise clumsy, since mental characteristics are simply mechanically added at the end of the process; they do not play any causal role and their genesis remains unclear.

According to the second version of attributional dualism, mental characteristics are “emergent.” The properties of consciousness are “emerged” by the brain, which in the process of evolution has reached a fairly complex level of organization. Likewise, color emerged when the combination of atoms formed physical objects capable of in a complex way reflect electromagnetic radiation. In contrast to epiphenomenalism, this version of attributive dualism attributes causal power to the properties of consciousness, which makes it more plausible. In contrast to materialism, it denies that such properties can be explained or predicted on purely physical grounds. This is where emergent theory runs into difficulties. Physical Science prides itself on the reductionist explanations it offers for objective sensory qualities such as temperature, pitch, and color. If these qualities are taken to be a model of emergence for subjective mental qualities, then it would be natural to expect a reductionist explanation of them. The latter threatens attributive dualism in that it may again return to the position of materialism.

The position of attributional dualism seems stronger if main problem, facing materialism, we consider the meaningfulness of our statements and beliefs. As K. Popper and a number of other philosophers have pointed out, it is difficult to understand how meaning can be explained from a purely physical point of view. This issue will be discussed in the next section.

Materialistic theories.

Since the 19th century. careful study of the evolution and physiology of living things has profoundly influenced concepts of consciousness. It is now recognized that the complex living organisms so widely represented in the animal kingdom are the result of countless experiments blindly carried out by nature, and benefit from the reproductive successes of their ancestors. Higher animals are distinguished not only by their complex structure, but also by their complexly organized behavior. Complex behavior requires a sophisticated control system, and this requirement is fulfilled by the nervous system. The evolution of creatures capable of increasingly complex behavior entailed the development of corresponding, complexly organized types of nervous systems. There must be something that receives sensory information about the outside world and then controls the muscles of that being accordingly. Built on the remains of living beings who lived in ancient times, history reveals the development of increasingly complex and branched types of nervous systems in organisms capable of increasingly complex behavior. A billion years ago, the transformation of loosely organized central ganglia from nerve cells into a well-structured spinal cord began. Subsequently, this brain forms a bulge at one end, which has a higher density of cells inside it and is capable of more complex reactions. These thickenings are then divided into three interconnected parts, which have different functions in response to the world around us and behavior management. 500 million years ago the primitive brain appears. Subsequently, brain development proceeded at a very different directions. With the advent of mammals, two new organs of essential importance appeared: the cerebellum, responsible for motor activity, and the two cerebral hemispheres, responsible for processing a variety of sensory data and control. complex circuits potential behavior. Finally, among countless other variations of the same type appears nervous system human, serving, like other creatures, to receive sensory information about the world, evaluate it and control bodily actions.

But the listed functions are also functions of the human psyche, the self-conscious mind. This leads to the conclusion that the self-aware mind is a functioning nervous system centered in the brain. On reflection, such a conclusion is difficult to avoid. Evolution in nature is purely physical. The genesis and development of each individual, determined by parental DNA, also has a physical nature. The way mature representatives of our species are structured is also entirely physical. If people have a mind - which is obvious - then everything points to its physical nature.

Even if we agree with this line of reasoning, the discussion of the materialist point of view does not end there. There are at least four types of materialist theories of consciousness, and the choice between them remains open.

Behaviorism.

The term refers primarily to the methodology of the research program that dominated empirical psychology in the mid-20th century, but it can also be used to refer to a general scientific attitude. From the point of view of a behaviorist, a “rational being” is a being that has a very complex set of innate and conditioned reflexes, i.e. physiologically determined attitudes, stable and unstable, capable of providing specific behavioral responses to specific sensory stimuli. What distinguishes humans and other higher animals from simpler creatures is their extraordinary variety of interconnected reflexes and the ability to form new reflexes. Among the main representatives of this approach are J. Watson (1878–1958) and B. Skinner (1904–1990).

Behaviorists pass a brief verdict on the fullness of the inner life of consciousness which finds expression in ordinary language. In their view, the task of psychology is to explain human and animal behavior, and this should be done without recourse to the ancient, suspicious and mythological language with which common sense describes mental states. The motives of the behaviorists are quite understandable: other sciences, such as physics and chemistry, were forced to discard the concepts common sense and look anew at the phenomena accessible to all in order to advance in their knowledge. Focusing on observable behavior seemed to be the price that had to be paid for making psychology a science.

The behaviorist approach has yielded many results, especially in the study of living beings with a simple organization, but has encountered serious obstacles in the study of higher animals. Here the relationship between sensory input and subsequent behavior is found to be so complex, subtle and varied that simple model reflex turned out to be insufficient not only to explain, but also to describe the real state of affairs. An example is a person's use of language. The need to postulate internal cognitive states and mechanisms became increasingly obvious, and psychology abandoned the purely external, “peripheral” analysis characteristic of classical behaviorism. The movement that arose in opposition to behaviorism is called “cognitive psychology” and is developing in three directions, each of which has its defenders and critics and is reflected in the corresponding philosophical theories of consciousness: 1) identity theory, 2) functionalism, 3) eliminative materialism.

Cognitive psychology

studies the behavior of higher animals, including human verbal behavior, and attempts to reconstruct the complex organization of internal cognitive states that give rise to this behavior. The field of cognitive psychology includes many studies dealing with the entire spectrum of cognitive abilities (for example, memory, attention, speech, reasoning). The emphasis here is on the intrinsic computational properties of cognitive states, such as what actually happens when someone “remembers” an object or event. Cognitive research has a pronounced empirical nature: the subject of study is cognition as a naturally occurring process, and theories are divided depending on whose behavior is being studied - humans or animals.

Neurosciences.

Neurophysiology, neuropharmacology and neuropsychology deal directly with the study of the brain. It is analyzed physical structure, the electrical and chemical processes occurring in it, as well as the activity of the brain as a whole. The use of modern techniques has allowed us to obtain impressive results. The structural and functional features of the visual system were studied, from the retina through several parts of the midbrain to the layered system of cells in the visual cortex. There is progress in explaining pattern recognition and volumetric perception. Scientists are close to discovering the chemical nature of the most important mental illnesses - schizophrenia and chronic depression, caused by a deficiency or imbalance of chemical impulse transmitters between nerve cells. Systematic study of brain damage caused by trauma or tumor has produced a global map of the brain regions involved in perception and motor functions. The functional organization of the brain begins to become clearer, although many of its properties remain unexplained.

The research programs described above occupy a dominant position in the study of intelligence. Even in the darkest periods of the history of science, optimism has helped to advance its development, and the turn of the millennium is undoubtedly a period of breakthrough in the sciences of consciousness.

Literature:

Velichkovsky B.M. Modern cognitive psychology. M., 1982
Searle J. Consciousness, brain and science. – Path, 1993, No. 4



What is the mind? Intelligence ( buddhi) is an intellectual-volitional principle that evaluates ideas and thoughts. Only humans have reason; animals have consciousness.

How does knowing a dog differ from knowing a person? The fact that a person knows that he knows, but a dog does not know. This is a very significant difference, which is our privilege and allows us to be truly human, that is, to change and go beyond the limits of our destiny, to create new karma. This is awareness or the ability to evaluate one's knowledge. The ability to look at myself from the outside and think whether I am acting correctly or not.

Living here and now means being at the level of the mind. The mind is the highest and strongest material element. This is the first element of creation. Yoga philosophy, based on the principles of Vedic cosmology, explains the structure of the microcosm (our body) in comparison with the macrocosm.

The first thing that emerged from matter, which was originally in an unmanifested state, was mind, mahat or buddhi(Sanskrit). Then everything that we see around us arose - the gross elements of the body, the sun, the planets and everything else.

The Russian word conscience is a synonym for the word buddhi or mind. How does conscience manifest itself? An unpleasant feeling inside that I was doing the wrong thing, that I did something wrong, behaved wrongly, said something wrong. People very often try to suppress this feeling within themselves, to drive it deeper. Like conscience, reason is an unpleasant quality; most people try to get rid of it. It is much harder for a reasonable person to live than for an unreasonable person, because the mind will always say: “Everything is wrong, everything is wrong, you are not doing what you should do.” Known words:

“I know only one tyrant, and that is the quiet voice of conscience.”

Mahatma Gandhi

But in fact, intelligence is our greatest value. And the most amazing thing we can do is to develop in ourselves the ability to use the mind, which for each individual is at its own level: for some it is stronger, for others it is weaker, and for others it is simply suppressed. A weak mind does not allow a person to distinguish good from bad and causes him to degrade. A strong mind elevates consciousness.

Properties of the mind:

  • distinguish matter from spirit,
  • distinguish consciousness from matter,
  • distinguish good from bad.

Philosophy Samkhya explains that one of the qualities of a person with a strong mind is the ability to overcome obstacles. According to Samkhya, all yogic, mystical powers and abilities that a person develops are the result of a strong, pure mind. A person with a strong mind can overcome any obstacle. Reason is not the ability to think logically, it is the ability to bring things to your consciousness, evaluate your actions, look at yourself from the outside and distinguish good from bad.

Man instinctively understands what is good and what is evil.

“Two things strike my imagination: the starry sky above and the moral law within us.”

Immanuel Kant

And this moral law is nothing more than conscience. A strong mind tells you how to act, even if the mind doesn’t like it.

Mental stomach

Reason is a highly important function of our consciousness, since it allows us to correctly digest the experience gained. Here we can draw an analogy with the fire of digestion. According to the ancient science of Ayurveda, if the digestive fire is poor, the food will not be digested, it will turn into poison and will poison the person, causing illness. Such a person will not have energy and strength. In the same way, a weak mind cannot digest the experience that a person receives when coming into contact with this world.

Undigested life experience turns into mental poison, which gives rise to illnesses at the mental level and moves to the physical, somatic level.
For example, grievances are a consequence of experiences that have not been digested by the mind. Our fate, God, providence have given us unpleasant experiences in life. We deserve this experience. We ourselves did something like this before and now we have received the result of these actions. We need to take this experience, digest it, learn a lesson from it, translate it into an assimilated form and make it our property, our wealth. If we cannot process this experience, it turns into mental poison. This poison destroys us from the inside, it turns into depression, anger, negativism, constant mental pain that a person pours out on others. People with weak minds who have lived long life, turn into impossible creatures, a source of constant negativity. The reason for this is simple - they did not have enough intelligence to digest their life experiences. And vice versa, people with a strong mind, who have survived, digested this experience, accepted it, turn it into some wonderful qualities. It's nice to communicate with such people.

We must develop intelligence in ourselves, this ability to digest, to understand our life experiences.

Mind and Karma

What's happening to our karma when do we turn on our minds? To do this we need to understand how in our everyday life this karma manifests itself. In the form of what are the most common things?

What we encounter every day is a manifestation of our karma. These are the various thoughts and desires that we have.


From time to time we become victims of these desires. They take over our consciousness and we do something we shouldn't do. This is it karma. It's very strong samskaras or mental imprints with very strong energy that rise to the surface of our consciousness at a certain moment under the influence of various planets. The time comes, and the unknown force within us becomes completely uncontrollable, almost impossible to cope with. Lust, anger, and other feelings and emotions gain incredible strength. Almost every person inevitably faces this sooner or later.

What to do in such a situation? The answer is to not turn off your mind at this moment, even when this force overwhelms us and we realize that we cannot resist it.

This is a simple formula for change - even if karma has overtaken us, we need to make an effort and stay on the platform of reason.

Because usually at such moments the mind tries to retreat. But it is very important to consciously go through this experience caused by an unconscious or subconscious force.

Secret toggle switch

At that moment when we, driven by a powerful unconscious force, commit various actions, we need to look at ourselves from the outside and try to smile. If you evaluate what is happening consciously, looking at yourself a little from the outside, and simply observe what is happening, then the impressions of the situation will not leave deep imprints in the memory and will not strengthen the very quality that caused this situation. In the end, one will gradually gain power over circumstances and cease to be an obedient toy in the hands of any qualities (or gunas). Then we will have a conscious experience.


The presence of consciousness allows you to get out of the influence of the unconscious. Most psychotherapeutic techniques are based on this. When the problem becomes conscious, the mind begins to digest it and puts it where it needs to be.

Beyond the storm of passions

“Everything that we do not bring to our consciousness enters our lives like fate”

Carl Jung

First you need to understand that I have one or another bad quality. For example, greed or laziness. And then look at yourself from the outside and think: “Wow, what a bad guy, what a lazy and greedy person.” Having seen the quality in ourselves, we will feel that it has become weaker. If we say: “Well, that’s just the way I am,” then we will remain the same. The first step to change is recognizing certain shortcomings in yourself. We will bring to our consciousness the idea that this is absolutely irrational, unnecessary thing, which did not bring us anything good. After all, in fact, greedy and lazy people are unhappy, and those who want to serve, give, share, and give are happy. Generous people who help everyone are loved, but no one likes greedy and lazy people.

Getting rid of negative qualities is not difficult. You just need to constantly transfer them to the sphere of consciousness, and at some point you will feel how they are gone, one after another.

It is very important to find a point of impartiality from which we will always observe ourselves from the outside. The so-called “eye of the cyclone” is a point of calm in the center of a destructive storm.

This is the mind - the ability to be beyond the vortices in our consciousness.

This ability is a highly important thing that will help us move to a deeper level. In order for the mind to be clear, so that it is always in this position, you need to constantly work on it, strengthen it.


Most best way strengthening the mind - contact with the Higher mind, with the sacred scriptures, which are the creation of this Higher mind, in which His law is very clearly stated. That law that is already embedded in our minds. We read a holy book and suddenly we have the feeling that we have always known this. Because we have this mind, there are criteria of good and evil, an understanding of what is good and what is bad, but because of our karma, because of our past actions, all this has become unclear, obscured by countless samskaras, negative experience. And in order to clear these karmic debris and immerse yourself in the “here and now” state, that is, in a state of awareness, it is very important to constantly be in contact with the Higher Mind in the form of books and in the form of people who live in accordance with the highest principles and values.

Explanatory dictionaries define Mind as a person’s ability to analyze, learn new things, the ability to take advantage of new knowledge, develop a personal point of view based on it, draw conclusions and make decisions.

The mind analyzes current events and distinguishes what is important and essential from what is secondary and unimportant.

Human mind − This is a category of a completely different property. It presupposes the ability to think abstractly, abstractly, not related to a specific life situation, to move from analyzing accumulated experience to generalization, and, as a result, developing concepts and formulas that can be used to manage life and the environment.

Direction of mind and reason

The role of a person in society, his place and significance, depend on his mental development.

Therefore, the mind, as the identification of a person, its consciousness, is directed outward; it transmits its understanding, its assessment and its position to the environment.

A person, receiving external information, analyzes it with the help of his mind, determines his position in society and finds his “I”, identifying with society or not corresponding to it. This is where the so-called “ego” manifests itself, as the principle of self-awareness and self-expression.

The mind operates on a different frequency, coming from the depths of the Soul. He not only compares, compares, and processes information, but is also able to capture both the whole picture and the roles of individuals. He does not identify himself with what he sees and hears; he perceives it detachedly, as if looking from above. This comprehension of the situation is also called awareness.

Let's try and define these two substances:

  • Intelligence- this is the spiritual component of a person, including the highest degree of thinking; it functions at a higher energy frequency, in contrast to consciousness (mind).
  • Mind– is an instrument of consciousness (consciousness + knowledge, i.e. accompanying knowledge). A person needs a mind to accept, research and analyze information.

The power of the mind in a person lies in the ability to be creative, which has always given birth to new inventions in the field of technology, engineering, etc.

Tasks of the human mind and reason

The mind is indispensable in detail, specific work. Divide the whole into parts, disassemble and understand each of them, analyze and draw conclusions based on previous experience.

Sometimes, while doing such in-depth work, the mind, fixated on this process, develops an exorbitant ego, and wants to control everything and everyone. At the same time, he does not have the ability to draw global conclusions, to cover the entire problem. Therefore, he gets stuck in separate fragments, which he himself, for his own convenience, isolated from the whole. And, since he is not able to make generalizations, in assessing the situation he always returns to the past, most often sad experience. And all the fears and concerns developed in the past are reinforced once again.

Mind-ego keeps a person in once and for all developed concepts, imposing his opinion and creating a feeling of his own superiority, and essentially pride, preventing a person from developing and looking for other, more positive solutions.

And when a person is able to break out of the limitations of the mind, raise his vibrations, rise from a practical solution to the situation to generalizations, control his thoughts and direct them to another, still unknown and initially frightening side, then the door opens to him leading to the Mind, which does not lead, does not impose his point of view, does not evaluate, does not call for previous experience. He is a part of the Essence that exists objectively.

The mind does not need to divide into parts to understand the whole, it does not need previous experience. He is open to receiving energy and knowledge from the Essence and, being in the same vibrational field with the seeker, appears as awareness.

While the mind always insists that it is right, the mind leads a person into the world of the unknown and provides a person with the opportunity to find and understand his own, a new understanding of the world, different from the one that was imposed on him.

The mind constantly directs a person to achieve a specific goal: build a career, achieve wealth, be the first. In this way he proves his necessity and superiority over others. At first, this seems to be the right path of development to a person. After all, we are always on the move, striving for new heights! But if the next result is not achieved as quickly as the previous one, there is a fear of not achieving, not being in time, falling out of the race, not being successful.

A person is in a vicious circle, sets an ever higher bar, for some reason breaks down, tortures himself with thoughts of the unattainable, and tries again. As a result, in pursuit of mirages, he exhausts himself mentally and physically, never achieves happiness in the generally accepted sense, and comes to a mental crisis.

But if a person is able to stop, take a step to the side and leave the circle, plunge into his deep inner world and look at it not from the position of the society in which he lives, but from the point of view of Eternity, then he can get closer to Reason. And suddenly it will be revealed that the Mind does not chase after those running in front and does not strive to achieve specific goals.

The human mind, like high-frequency energy, penetrates any form and, connecting with its corresponding vibration, reveals its inner content. We intuitively and with the help of sensations and feelings can approach or even enter the same vibrational field with the Mind.

And then a lot becomes clear and understandable. When you understand that, living in society and involuntarily imbued with its values, you can live separately from it, without unnecessary fuss and struggle for a place in the sun. Then everything that happens will flow in a calm, comfortable rhythm and the feeling of life will rise to another, higher level.

Based on this, we can draw a small conclusion about two types of relationships with reality

1 . The mind is an instrument of personal consciousness; it is directed outward .

2 . Human mind foperates at a different, higher energy frequency. He receives the necessary information coming from within, from the human Soul.

3 . A mind that is free from biases, evaluations and hooks on experience has no need to impose its point of view and share something. It merges with the energy of a particular circumstance and extracts the necessary information, which is called awareness.

Something in us that leads us along this path, motivates us beyond the limits of our subjectivity, attracts us to an object, without being itself something tangible, something through which we, strictly speaking, live in a philosophical understanding is called reason.

Reason is never without reason, but is infinitely superior to reason. Reason enters into philosophical faith as a necessary element. Any sense of truth is revealed only then in pure form when it is purified in the movement of the mind.

It seems to us...

If you ask us to name the greatest achievements of the human mind, we might think of the Pyramid of Cheops, spaceships, the Sydney Harbor Bridge. These are truly great achievements. But not the greatest. A sophisticated machine would still be able to design and build any of these advances, because designing and building requires logic and persistence, which the supposed machine has in abundance.

In fact, there is an achievement so amazing that no...

I can't feel my brain either. Over the past few years, I've had the uneasy feeling that someone - or something - is rewiring my brain, rewiring its neural networks, reprogramming my memory. My brain isn't dying - as far as I can tell - but it is changing.

I don't think the same way anymore. This is felt most strongly when reading. Once upon a time, it was easy for me to lose myself in a book or a long article. The narrative or reasoning captured my mind, and I spent long hours...

In the 17th century, René Descartes based his vision of nature on a fundamental distinction between two independent and separate spheres—the realm of the mind, the “thing thinking” (res cogitans), and the realm of matter, the “thing extended” (res extensa).

This conceptual gap between mind and matter has been a commonplace in Western science and philosophy for over three hundred years.

Following Descartes, scientists and philosophers continued to consider the mind as some kind of incomprehensible entity and could not imagine how this “thinking...

Human weaknesses are what diverge from a person’s idea of ​​what should be, but through his own efforts are present in his life. This is a soft, politically correct name for our or other people's bad habits.

Women treat their weaknesses rather with understanding; they consider indulging their weaknesses as a manifestation of self-love.

"Shopping, tiramisu and chatting - isn't it nice?" Another option is to worry and engage in self-criticism.

Men love to fight and overcome, that's why they...

Intelligence is the ability to give concise and accurate answers.

This version is not new, but only in the process of the development of computer technology and the creation of artificial intelligence did aspects emerge that essentially distinguish intelligence.

Reasonableness is often associated with logic, rationality, and practicality. However, many things can be called rational and reasonable: a crystal, a tree, a beautiful building. So reason is not yet part of everything reasonable.

Intelligence is often associated with self-awareness. However, what is...

Human brain- the most complex, unknown, and creatively gifted system of knowing the world. Biologists, neurophysiologists, and psychologists are engaged in research into the activities of this unknown system. Sometimes we learn extremely interesting facts from them.

Fact 1: Our short-term memory can only remember seven objects at a time. It is for this reason that most telephone numbers consist of 7 digits. However, you can train a person to process a larger number of objects if you teach him...

The human face shrinks during the process of evolution, according to anthropologists from Ohio University, whose findings were published by The Sunday Times.

10 thousand years ago, in their opinion, the face was one third larger - this is evidenced by numerous skulls and their fragments, the parameters of which were subjected to statistical processing.

The most serious changes affected the structure of the jaws and teeth. Scientists attribute this to the emergence of agriculture and the partial abandonment of raw meat, since humans no longer...

Inherent to any person in the everyday world, regardless of who the person is and where he comes from. To a certain extent, the mind itself is the first attention, so great is its central role in the creation of the attention of the tonal.

Physiologically correlates with the head region.

Nature of Mind

The mind reflects the external order, testifies to the effects of the tonal that organizes the principles of the Universe, while knowing nothing about this order, its nature and having no explanations about it.

For example, when we think and speak, we follow some order, without knowing how we do it or what this order is.

The nature of the mind is multi-layered:

1. The essential, deep nature of the mind is the nature of attention - it always carries with it the separation of integrity, splitting, isolation of various components, strengthening or repressing them. For example, it is the mind that generates the belief that the world consists of isolated concrete objects. This ability is also inherent in other organic beings.

2. The revolutionary feature of the mind, what made a person become a person, is the so-called “abstract thinking” - the ability to imagine an image of what is perceived in mental space and discard unimportant (according to current templates) details of the images when comparing sensory signals similar to the original one. This process led to the identification of certain classes and categories with varying degrees of similarity from the innumerable mass of images. That is, in fact, it became the first step towards building an inventory list.

3. The most important direct consequences of the previous process were the image of the Self and the Not-Self, as well as the emergence of language. Self-awareness began the construction of the ego with its own intentions and in fact became the defining characteristic of a rational being. And in language the mind manifests itself, and, in fact, language becomes the way of existence of the mind.

4. The next layer of the nature of the mind is its reflexivity. Reason is both the source and the product of reflection. Thanks to this ability, the mind can talk about fictitious principles, about categories that cannot be found in the real world, about the nature of the above-mentioned disciplines, and even, despite the fact that reflection belongs to consciousness, can represent consciousness itself as an object.

As you know, thinking begins with understanding, and it in turn is based on recognition, on repeating what has been learned. To do this, the mind at the entrance step by step excludes from its field of attention sensory constructs that it considers insignificant, and this initially greatly limits the field of upcoming operations. After all, the intellect is productive only when it eliminates everything superfluous to what it produces. at the moment operations.

The tragic fact is that mind and perception are linked together into a single, perfectly coordinated organism. And as a result, the mind thinks not only what is actually perceived, but also what is mentally perceived, and the latter process has become dominant for the mind.

The main characteristics of the mind of an ordinary person:

1. Sociality is a natural product of the interaction of self-awareness (minds)

2. The script is the main structural element of the social self

3. There are three basic tools of the mind (thinking):

A. Abstraction (working with conventional features of objects)

b. Analysis (decomposition of an object according to a certain scheme)

V. Synthesis (brings together conditional products of analysis in a conditional manner)

Based on this, they developed practices designed to put reason in its place, but in no case abandoning it, but finding its proper use.

The foundation of these practices was to take advantage of the fact that, due to its inability to comprehend everything that was happening in the world, the mind turned off at moments when it found itself beyond its narrow boundaries. This was achieved in many ways, such as:

3. Understanding the thinking process at the most subtle, philosophical level. Tracking the thinking process.

All these practices gradually led to the fact that the tonal was cleared and completely grouped on the side of the mind (on the right side of the energy cocoon) and it became safe for the mind to recognize the existence of the ineffable nagual (which for an ordinary person is life-threatening) as a fact, and not as an intellectual exercise.

Ultimately, throwing off the shackles of the mind and gaining integrity paradoxically turned the mind into a truly magical tool, making it possible to comprehend the essence and look soberly at things and situations, revealing both negative and positive sides in them.

Intelligence saves a warrior from falling into the abyss of meaninglessness, where a person (even having turned into a magician of intuitive knowledge) loses almost all his abilities. The insights of intuition must be translated into clear thought, otherwise they are useless.

Therefore, the magician uses the mind as an obedient tool - turns it off for a while, if necessary, or returns it back to analyze an unusual situation from the point of view of abstract thinking.

In fact, magicians have developed the mind to its limits, using the fact that only with full understanding can the intellect include itself in the magical description without loss on the part of the person's balance and integrity.

Having become models of the mind, having extremely accurately moved their assemblage point to the point of Reason, they threw a “one-way bridge” to the point of Will seen from there, called “pure understanding”. It is precisely this that says that the mind is just an island among many others.