If you observe yourself and other people you would probably come to the conclusion that your body and how it adapted to the environment determined your personality, your self concept. By a process of generalization you would also conclude that body determines mind. That is to say that you would say that mind is epiphenomenal, is the product of bodily processes, especially processes in the human brain.
This is the scientific approach to psychology. Science studies matter, space and time and essentially teaches the philosophy of materialism (that philosophy states that matter made human beings who they are).
Yet there is evidence of individuals leaving their bodies and experiencing themselves outside their bodies, such as in out of body experiences and near death experiences. Moreover, in our dreams at night our minds produce other personalities, house them in bodies that seem to make them behave as they do, produce the entire world and thus suggesting that mind is not determined by the individual’s body for the individual’s mind in sleep-dream produces other personalities and could have made him any of those personalities.
If you say that it is the individual’s body, his brain that produced the many persons in his dream and gave them different personalities you have not answered the question: if the individual’s brain (mind) can produce many personalities why did it seem to produce his personality and make it seem determined by his body; it could have produced a different personality for him and also made it seem produced by his body.
Simply stated there are many reasons lending credence to the thesis that mind exists apart from body.
It would seem that mind is playing games with its self; that it enters body and makes it seem like body determined its doing. The nature of the game seems to be for mind to make it seem like matter determined it and for mind to completely forget that it exists outside matter.
In this game scientists seem the most realistic persons for they seem to study a world where matter seems to determine people. It is simply not easy to believe that mind determined body; what is easy to believe is that body determined mind, as scientists believe.
Some metaphysical systems say that matter, space and time do not even exist, that the universe only seems to exist in our dreams. If the material universe does not exist and is in our dream how can it determine mind?
Hinduism and A course in miracles say that the world and people are dream figures in our minds. They say that our minds seem infinite in numbers but in reality are joined as one mind.
This then means that there are two psychologies, scientific psychology that studies how matter (body) seems to determine the human personality and mind and spiritual psychology that shows how mind produced the human body and made it seem to produce the human personality.
The two psychologies cannot be mixed for they operate with different parameters. They must be studied separately and not mixed.
The Institute of Scientific and Spiritual Psychology (ISSP) studies both the scientific psychology that says that mind is determined by matter as well as spiritual psychology that says that mind determines matter and the human personality. The two approaches to people are studied simultaneously for they give a fuller picture of who human beings are and help them cope with the exigencies of their lives better than an approach that sees them only as matter or as spirit.
MY PERCEPTION OF HUMAN NATURE
In this paper I will summarize how I see people and how their psychological issues are to be addressed in psychotherapy. I see people as the Psychologist to whom I am most indebted saw them. Alfred Adler wrote many books but his psychology can be summarized in a few sentences. It is as follows. People are born with a mind that enables them to appreciate their position on planet earth. In childhood they appreciate the forces arrayed against them. They feel an urge to do what they have to do to survive. At some point they compare their efforts to the forces opposed to their survival and draw the conclusion that they are not powerful. They individually feel inadequate to do what nature demands from them for survival. Each human being feels inferior.
People feel inferior differently, some more so than others; those born with weak bodies, what Adler called organ inferiority, feel the world more stressful on their bodies ; they feel challenged by the tasks demanded for their survival than those born into healthy bodies.
The human child feels inferior, inadequate and powerless Vis a Vis the forces of nature (and society if he is placed in an unloving situation). However, there is a will to live in every human child. The will to live does not accept the child’s powerlessness lying down. The child does not roll over and permit nature to destroy him. He struggles to do whatever he has to do to survive. Whereas he feels weak he strives to feel strong and powerful.
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THE WORLD IS DESIGNED FOR MATTER TO SEEM TO DETERMINE MIND
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