Dr. N.L. Kachhara
Interactions between the Soul, Mind and Body
Jain dualism is a special kind of dualism. Instead of two levels of existence (the non-physical soul and material body, comprised of two ontologically distinct substances, as supposed in substance or Cartesian dualism), Jain dualism consists of three levels of existence: the soul, mind and body. This three-tier structure is applicable to all organisms and human beings. It is also true of heavenly and infernal beings, with the difference that they have a protean body instead of the material body of animals. The details of this structure vary a little between higher and lower organisms.
Higher organisms (vertebrates), are five-sense beings endowed with mind, including human beings and common animals. All such organisms have a developed brain. Figure 1 shows a proposed model of the interacting system of human beings. There are three distinct units: the soul, mind and body. The soul has no physical connection with the mind or body and is related only to the karma body through the principle of parallelism. The mind and body are physical units that interact through radiation. The mind consists of the karma body and the conscious mind. The karma body is divided into two parts: psychical karma and biological karma. The fiery body is comprised of the conscious mind and the "prana" body. It must be remembered that the karma body, conscious mind, and "prana" body (made from "karma vargana," "manovargana," and "tejasvargana," respectively) are special kinds of fields and are coextensive with the material body.
Figure 1. Interaction system in humans and higher organisms.
Notes. PSY-K: Psychical karma; PB: Prana body; PSL-K: Biological karma; ADYS: Adhyvasaya; CM: Conscious mind (physical); BP: Bio photons.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, the karma body continuously emits "adhyvasaya" radiations. The "adhyvasaya" from psychical karma, which represents our psychical personality, interacts with the conscious mind-part of the fiery body and produces "lesya" radiations. Some "adhyvasaya" from the psychical karma directly interacts with the brain and produces "citta," which is the physical imprint of our past memories and impressions. The psychical "adhyvasaya" imparts the features of non-righteousness, non-restraint, and violence as well as passions and quasi-passions to the conscious mind; these are reflected in our thoughts and actions. The "lesya" radiations bearing these features represent the state of our conscious mind. "Lesyas" reflect our psychical personality; the color of "lesyas" represents in some way our thoughts, emotions and feelings and is closely related to our qualities.
The "adhyvasaya" emitted by biological karma determines our physical personality. The emissions from morphological karma and feeling-producing karma, most likely as bio-photons, directly interact with the cells in the body and control the biological and physiological activity through the operation of the genes. Age-determining karma operates the fiery body, draws "prana" ("tejasvargana") from the cosmos, and supplies "prana" energy to various body parts and cells for their functioning.
The conscious mind interacts with the brain through lesya radiations. The brain is the center for information processing. The information in the brain is received from both the senses and the mind. All information in the conscious mind is presumably copied onto the brain and is available for processing. The conscious mind and the brain constitute a system in which the conscious mind contains the software and the brain contains the hardware. The capacity of the brain's hardware is very large; generally, we are able to use only 5-7 percent of its total capacity. The processed information in the brain has two end-uses, one for the functions of the material body and the other for the mind. We thus have four broad kinds of information flow from the brain:
- Input information received from the senses and biological activities and output information used for the material body
- Input information received from the senses and biological activities and output information sent to the conscious mind
- Input information received from the conscious mind and output information used for the material body
- Input information received from the conscious mind and output information also used by the conscious mind.
The first case is the major application of the brain and involves motor, autonomic, and other functions of the body. In the second case, the processing of sensual and biological input is instrumental in the generation of thoughts, emotions, desires and feelings in the psychical mind and their storage in the conscious mind. In the third case, the thoughts and emotions stored in the conscious mind are processed by the brain, and signals are sent to various parts of the body to generate actions. No external input is required for this. In the fourth case, the conscious mind generates information by itself; thoughts from the conscious mind are processed in the brain and the output appears as new thoughts or mental states in the conscious mind. More than one type of processing can take place at a time. For example, input from the senses may cause activity in the body as well as generate new mental states in the conscious mind; or, in a dream state, the input from the conscious mind may cause bodily activity in the form of rapid eye movements and generate new mental states in the form of feelings and emotions.
In Chapter 4 I described the structure of psychical mind and found that buddhi is one of its components. We recall that buddhi B is (d2)p in the sleep state. Since the states of physical and psychical mind correlate, we see that the cognitive activity of the conscious mind is greatly hampered in the sleep state: it now perceives the generality rather than the particularity of the object. For instance, if an object is brought into contact we vaguely sense it but do not know what it is.
The conscious mind is a complex system working on the basis of various kinds of inputs. The main kinds of inputs that generate mental states or thoughts are: (1) active karma as defined in Chapter 4; (2) stimuli coming from the physical senses through the brain; (3) memories stored in the conscious mind itself; and (4) higher mental states generated by the conscious mind from previous mental states. The last component is a specialty of humans, who have developed the power of thinking and reasoning. One or more types of input may act at any one time to determine our conduct and behavior.
It is seen that the brain is an important component of the life system; neither mind nor body can function without the brain. In case of head trauma or brain damage, a part or all of the information in the brain is lost and its information processing activity is hampered, rendering the system incapable of proper functioning. However, in this case full information is still available in the mind; if the brain is restored to its initial or healthy state, the information from the conscious mind is again transferred to the brain and the brain resumes its normal functioning. However, it must be emphasized that brain activity is not independent, as believed by materialists; it is regulated by the conscious mind, which in turn is conditioned by the soul (psychical mind). The soul is the source of consciousness and intelligence, which acts through the mind on the brain and body. A definite correlation between mental activity and neural activity is a requirement of this system, but this should not be construed to mean that the brain itself possesses consciousness or intelligence.
Rupert Sheldrake is one of the few contemporary scientists who maintain that it is possible for memory to exist without the support of the brain. David Bohm concurs with him on this possibility. Sheldrake argues that just because we do not know of any memory without the brain, it does not follow that there cannot be any memory outside the brain. As all we know, the brain can act as a conduit through which memory (or consciousness) manifests itself, much like the antenna and wiring in a radio act as conduits for the electromagnetic waves that are then manifested as sound. Thus, just like the radio signal can exist (in the form of electromagnetic waves) outside the radio's antennas and wiring, memory can exist outside the brain.
"All conventional theories assume that memories are somehow coded and located in a memory store in the brain. When they are needed, they are recovered by a retrieval system. However, for a retrieval system to retrieve anything it has to know what it wants to retrieve; it thus must be able to recognize the memory that it is trying to retrieve. In order to recognize it, the retrieval system must itself have some kind of memory. Therefore, the retrieval system must have a sub-retrieval system to retrieve its memories from its store. This leads to an infinite regress." Sheldrake, therefore, suggested that the brain is more like a tuning system. These arguments support the concept that memory exists outside the brain in the conscious (and also unconscious) mind. The brain, consisting of hardware, is the processing center.
The conscious experience identified by the "what it is like" sense is made by the soul, not the mind. The mind is a physical entity and is therefore devoid of the property of consciousness. The phenomenal property is also possessed by the soul. The term "conscious" in "conscious mind" denotes the property of the mind through which the soul makes conscious experiences; the mind itself is not conscious. The "chetana" manifests in the mind and body so the mind and the body can function in a given manner. No function of mind or body is possible without "chetana;" a dead body may have all the necessary organs and parts in place, but it cannot perform any action typical of life because the soul has left the body. Dualists assign consciousness to the mind and materialists assign it to the brain because the mind and brain function the way they do in the presence of "chetana." It is clear that consciousness is not a property of the physical mind or brain. The conduct and behavior of any being is determined by its karma and the "chetana" property of the soul. Jain dualism thus presents a theory of body, mind and spirit where the non-physical spirit manifests in the body and the mind, and the life processes are explained.
The main property of the soul that distinguishes it from matter is "chetana," which is not just common "consciousness." Philosophers hold that consciousness is "awareness" or "experience" in the conscious state, which is supposed to be absent in the unconscious or comatose state. "Chetana", being a property of the soul, is always present; it manifests explicitly in the conscious state and implicitly in the unconscious or comatose state. Without "chetana," no life is possible. The manifestation of "chetana" takes place in various ways, principally intelligence, awareness, bliss, and willpower. Jain philosophy assigns infinite capabilities to the soul that are fully realized when all of the soul's karma is destroyed by special efforts (i.e. activities like austerity, penance, meditation, etc.). The state known as omniscience can be attained when an individual is able to annihilate all psychical karma. In such a state, the individual experiences the (super) natural powers of a soul with infinite intelligence, intuition, bliss and willpower. In the absence of psychical karma, the psychical mind and hence the conscious mind ceases to exist. This means that although the physical structure consisting of manavargana continues to exist, it does not function as a conscious mind.
What is intelligence? Intelligence is a property of the soul and does not belong to physical objects like the mind or brain. The soul possesses infinite intelligence, but this is limited by intelligence-obscuring karma. This means that the intelligence-obscuring karma does not allow the intelligence of the soul to fully manifest in the mind or brain. The reduction of intelligence-obscuring karma results in the increased manifested intelligence of an individual. In the presence of intelligence-obscuring karma, knowledge is relative (to karma) and an individual is not able to perceive an object in all of its reality. This is the reason that the principles, theories and explanations that are advanced by imperfect individuals who possess intelligence-obscuring karma are vulnerable to change. A perfect person, i.e. an omniscient person who is free of intelligence-obscuring karma, knows the object in its absolute reality and is able to describe its nature as it actually exists.
