For the past several episodes I discussed our current scientific views about our Mind. I took some interesting excerpts from my book “How does the Mind Work?” while explaining the scientific views.
In the next few episodes, I am going to pick up some interesting ideas about the Mind from my book “Missing dimensions in our current understanding of the Mind”.
My idea is to approach the Mind from both sides – modern science as well as ancient philosophy, pick useful things from both, and finally take you to regions beyond the mind itself! So, stay tuned till the end of this series.
Ancient Indians as well as ancient Greeks had pondered about Mind for thousands of years, though their ideas were mostly philosophical. Their ideas were based more on intuitive feel rather than on empirical evidence.
Current scientific quest to know the Mind objectively, probably started in 300 B.C. by the Greek Medico philosopher Praxagoras. Praxagoras was both a medical man as well as a philosopher.
During Praxagoras times, heart was assumed to be the seat of the mind. We should keep in mind that in those days none of the gadgets we have today existed, nor did they have any in depth knowledge about human anatomy.
Ironically, even these days, we keep making oblique references to heart when we talk about feelings, emotions and so on, though our current view is that they belong to the brain. We heartily love a person, we offer heart felt condolences to a deceased person, and sometimes we don’t have a ‘heart to hurt someone’!
Our Greek friend Praxagoras was looking for the Mind in the heart! But he did not find the Mind there! What he found were some tube-like structures that we know today as blood vessels – arteries and veins.
Praxagoras could identify the difference between arteries and veins. But since he worked only with corpses, he observed that the veins of a corpse contained blood, whereas he found the arteries to be empty. He reasoned that when the body is alive, the arteries must be carrying some substance other than blood.
Like the ancient Indians, ancient Greeks too believed that there is a substance called Pneuma that kept the body alive. This was associated with the air we breathe. Indians called it Prana. When the body died, it was thought that the body would lose its pneuma or Prana.
Praxagoras thought that the arteries carried the Pneuma from the heart to other parts of the body to keep it alive. And when the person died, this Pneuma stopped flowing.
Poor fellow stopped at the heart. If only he had gone up a bit, he would have found the real Mind! 😉 That discovery was probably reserved for two more of his successors namely Herophilus and Erasistratus.
It was certainly inhuman, but well, it did help these two surgeons make some progress in understanding the Mind, which their predecessor Praxagoras missed out.
Herophilus and Erasistratus were able to clearly distinguish the artery and vein systems from the nervous system, and establish that the nervous system was centered on the brain rather than the heart.
They were even able to distinguish between sensory and motor nervous pathways – the pathways through which sense inputs are carried to the brain and those that carried the commands from the brain for physical action.
However, they still maintained that arteries carry pneuma from the heart to the rest of the body! Indeed, Erasistratus argued that the arteries distribute a "vital pneuma" responsible for basic biological functions such as metabolism; and that the nerves distribute what he called "psychic pneuma" which was thought to be responsible for mental functions.
While these Greek Medico Philosophers were busy focusing their attention on the body, their Buddhist counterparts in India, had already developed a detailed theory on the working of the Mind. Their interest was not very much in understanding the Mind, but more in modulating its functions so that one can achieve an end to all worldly misery.
These Buddhists formulated detailed ways of modulating the functioning of the Mind. Their approach was neither dissection nor vivisection. They used an intuitive approach fortified by logic and reasoning, a totally nonviolent way.
We will discuss those developments in the next episode.
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King 2019
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