…THE MIND…
Stage 40 / Friday 5 June / From Argagnon to Navarrenx / 28 km
My long stage yesterday did not seem difficult, my thoughts germinating so much in my brain monopolized my attention and overshadowed all feelings of fatigue. These thoughts, about thoughts, made me realize that there are two sorts of activities competing in my braincase.
First of all, there is an internal activity, dominated by neuronal activity, which, strictly speaking, makes me reflect: it analyzes observations and lived experiences and tries to suggest to me the proper behavior to manage the practical and day to day tasks. It rightly observes for example that I have a little emptiness in the stomach and does suggest that I should stop at the first open bakery to purchase some sustenance. The thought suggests means of arriving at a goal. They say that it acts through a mediate process, because it reaches the goal by means of a process using intermediaries. In the example I have chosen, I could say that hunger justifies the means. Because, being hungry, and having discovered over the years that bakeries harbor the means of appeasing hunger, pictures of bakeries (which are among the images accumulated in my brain since my earliest childhood) have been awakened in my mental self. And it is by the intermediary of these images that I will find a solution for appeasing my hunger.
Then there follows a second activity in my head. This is no longer an internal thought, but is manifest through a feeling that something has come to plant itself in me from outside, a concept which seems to have penetrated my skull from elsewhere. In ancient times they used the world “spiritus” to designate this phenomenon which seems inspired from outside, in opposition to the word “mens” to designate the mental thought concocted within my brain.
The spiritual version of the thought remains in current language when we say of someone: « Il a de le l’esprit » [the French expression used to mean: “He is witty”], meaning that he is capable of surprising us by his ideas which seem to come from elsewhere. And the word “spirit” has the same root as the word “inspired,” as if a breath from elsewhere has come into us. Moreover, there is a connotation of entering and exiting, like breathing in and breathing out, and rather than neuronal, this activity is predominantly mood setting. A light-hearted or playful spirit can, moreover, put you in a good mood (humor), while a kill-joy spirit risks putting you in a bad mood (humor)!
This is as much from my thought, mental and mediate, than from my spirit, spiritual and immediate, that I expect answers to my questioning. When I say spiritual, this is not that I’m trying to laugh. But it is the word I use to describe my desire to raise my eyes to heaven in order to orient my intuition when my mental is incapable of giving me an answer. And sometimes, yes, without an intermediary, something, a new concept, comes to inspire me, whispering an answer, like a fruit fallen from the sky!
This reminds me of the film “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks shipwrecked on a desert island in the Pacific with a few diverse packages shipped by his company Fedex. It is his mental that reacts, in a mediate way, when thirsty and hungry he struggles to find a way to open a coconut and succeeds in making a hatchet with an ice-skate fastened to a pole. But when the solitude weighs heavily on his spirit, and he find no answer to his questions about his destiny, he creates a partnership with Wilson, a volleyball on which he paints a smiling face and with whom he seeks inspiration! Often frustrated with the lack of replies, Tom gets angry with Wilson … |
Wilson and Tom Hanks, 15 years after the film “Cast Away” |
As if they had to be two in order to escape this situation … which makes me imagine (oh, thank you intuition from beyond!) that 1 + 0 = 2. Because “one” man alone (Tom Hanks) with his ball absolutely incapable of speaking (Wilson, this absolute “zero”) make a “pair” really quite “spirited” (in the “humorous” sense of the word)!
Me too (is it telepathy?) I sometimes have the impression of being able to communicate directly and silently with others. Instant exchange, freed from time and space, moving at the speed of light. And this without being able to explain it, this exchange is certainly very enriching. One might imagine that the spirit has come from (the exterior) near or afar to stimulate my thought, which would cause to rebound beyond me the spirit thus modified. You who read these notes are benefitting from this rebound today!
Thus, between my mediate thoughts and my spirit of immediate intuition is created the here-and-now of my being, conferring its own consistency on me, and the persistence of its experience day after day. But the mental functioning is not unique to humans. Geared toward the practical and day to day tasks, it seems to act in all sorts of animals and even in other living forms, inciting in them efficient behaviors, from the lizard who knows to run away when a shadow approaches, to the sunflower that slowly turns on its stem to get maximum benefit from the sun’s rays.
The higher animals, primates for example, elephants or dolphins, also display a relational intelligence and a capacity for anticipation which seems to have nothing to envy in human capabilities. Are they as conscious of it as I am, that is the question! Would the spirit be hosted in a subconscious which redistills it – advisedly! – to consciousness? A genetic inheritance tucked away in my cells from birth, and which awakens, roving out, when certain triggers are activated? Which cells? Which triggers?
There is still more to elaborate in this foggy distinction between thought and spirit. But I see that the concept of mens / spiritus is helpful in avoiding the usual stumbling block of a concern for objectivity, dear to science. The latter always and only wants to take the material as a departure point of observation and reflection, and wants to deny the concept of spirit, which obviously poses to it a problem! But could science have invented the subjective but indispensable role of Wilson, the volleyball which allowed Tom to survive on his desert island? Another form of connivance between the “Right side” and the “Reverse side” already evoked during this pilgrimage, I now see the “heads” and “tails” sides of my little brain’s activity.
Tails: the thought, presiding over daily choices of eating, dressing, sleeping, etc. This is probably the source of human talent in all that is technological, objective, and concrete. Heads: the spirit, suscitant arousing appetite and lifestyle (and survival), sympathies, hopes. It is the source of artistic genius and promoter of subjective new inspirations.
