body is the expression of the soul, and the soul is the expression of the spirit.
The very terms, body, soul
and spirit, need elucidation. The 'body' is the physical
body with its intelligence scarcely comprehensible to us; the 'soul' is the
mind
studied
by scientific psychology, i.e. reflected activity which is controlled by impressions
coming from the external world and the body. The 'spirit' is those higher principles
which direct, or under certain conditions may direct, the life of the soul.
1 The body is the domain of instincts and the inner instinctive consciousnesses of
separate organs, parts of the body and the whole organism.
2 The
soul consists of sensations, representations, concepts, thoughts, emotions and
desires.
3 - is the region of the unknown.
In the usual conditions of the inner life of an ordinary man the focus of his
consciousness, which is constantly shifting from one object to another, lies in his
mind.
I am hungry.
I read a newspaper.
I expect a letter.
Only rarely does it touch the regions which are open to religious, aesthetic and
moral emotions and the higher intellect which finds expression
in abstract thinking
connected with moral and aesthetic feeling, i.e. with the realization of the necessity to
co-ordinate
thought, feeling, word and deed.
But usually, in saying 'I', a man means not the total complex of all the three
domains, but that which is at the moment in the focus of his consciousness. I
want:
these words which play the most important role in man's life, are usually far from
referring simultaneously to all the sides of his being; as a rule they refer merely to some
very small and insignificant facet which at the given moment
fills the focus of
consciousness and subjugates all the rest, until it is driven out by another equally
insignificant facet.
And in the mind of a man there goes on an endless shifting of view from one object
to another. Through the focus of perception there runs a continuous cinema film of
feelings and impressions and each separate impression determines the 'I' of the given
moment.
From this point of view the mind of a man has often been
compared to a dark sleeping
city in the midst of which watchman's lanterns
slowly move about, each throwing light on a small circle round itself. This is
a perfectly true analogy. At each moment there come into focus a few of
these circles illumined by the flickering light while the rest is plunged into
darkness.
Each small illumined circle represents an 'I', living its own life, at times
very brief. And the movement goes
on endlessly, now fast, now slow,
bringing out into the light more and more new objects, or else old ones from
the realm of memory, or in torment going
round and round the same
persistent thoughts.
This continuous movement which goes on in our mind, this constant
shirting of light from one 'I' to another, may perhaps explain the phenomenon
of
motion
in the external visible world.
Intellectually
we know that there is no such motion. We know that
everything exists
in
the infinite spaces of time, that nothing happens, nothing
becomes,
everything is.
But we do not see everything at once, and so
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