On mental health II

What is the “mind” ? “Mental” in the dictionary means “related to the the mind or to disorders of the mind. But is it clear what “mind” is ? This is a very crucial question and one that we have not really answered in the Western paradigm. This may well be the root cause of not being able to solve the “mental health” riddle, which is getting more acute all the time despite so much talk about it and so many more resources dedicated nowadays to solving it.

Of course, this is closely related to THE question: who am I ?…Western philosophy, psychology, neurobiology, medicine, etc, etc are each working with a certain set of theories about one or both of those questions. And of course those fields are partially overlapping and none is really integrative. A striking fact is that almost all of the theories involved have been developed from observing or trying to help troubled people, not by studying great, ideal human beings. In fact a number of the working theories go straight against the life and teachings of those ideal beings.

In the more general sense, the “mind” has been equated with the impalpable side of our being, what is beyond matter. Of course one needs a reasonably working body to start with, as a general principle. But clearly what defines us most is above and beyond the body. Some of the people that are widely regarded as great have had significant body impairments and of course lots of people with perfect bodies have manifested terrible mental diseases and/or anti-human behaviour, etc. There continue to be attempts to fully reduce human existence, including inner life, to a sum of physicochemical processes, but the vast majority accept that while those processes are just the same in many mammals, humans are different in ways beyond the matter.

But is this para-material side of us one solid separate blob ? Or is it a little “kingdom” administered by the “soul” like in a recent hit animation ? Or a sum of many parts - like another body ? Or just a different structure with its own organization and laws ? And how exactly it relates to the body, if at all ?… It is fascinating to note that the best integrative model is thousands of years old. And yes, the subtle system, with the chakras and main energy channels, truly explains and integrates not only the different aspects of our inner persona, the ”mind”, but the body and autonomous nervous system as well. In the work of very insightful people like Jung and Maslow one finds echos of this integration, on which we will touch soon…