Goodness and Deepermind

Finding Your Soul

Finding the Soul

To find the soul means to more than looking for some lost object. It means coming from a higher place and looking from this vantange point to find the soul. From this higher point of view, we can see our life as it has been and project where it is going. This is the journey of the soul.

Finding Happiness

Happiness is dependent on our thoughts. Our thoughts modifiy the soul. The soul, for example, can be made happier and richer by thinking positive throughts and higher thoughts. Higher thoughts are more spiritual than what we experience in daily life. And much different.

As we drive down life's journey, we can focus on the what is wrong or marvel at all the wonderful things we and others have done in the world, and how God has made nature so wonderful.

The Center for Spritual Living

The Center for Spiritual Living (CSL) also known as the Church of Religious Science, teaches many courses on how to find ourselves and to bring us the joy we want.

There are other organizations such as Unity that are based personal growth.

Add science to the mix and you really have something.

Levels of Moral Development

If you are into psychology, one link to these ideas is the developmental level of a person. A young child cannot understand abstract thought very well if at all. Moral development parallels development of abstract thought as we see below..

According to Kohberg there are six stages of moral development. One of more enlightening aspects of social psychology is Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development. Kohlberg (1976, 1986) studied reaction of children, adolescents and adults to a series of moral dilemmas.

Stage 1:

Punishment and obedience orientation. The physical consequences of an action determine whether it is good or bad. Avoiding punishment and bowing to superior power are valued positively.

Stage 2:

Instrumental relativist orientation. right action consists of behavior that satisfies one's own needs. Human relations are viewed in marketplace terms. Reciprocity occurs, but is seen in a pragmatic way, i.e., "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."

Conventional Level

Stage 3:

Interpersonal concordance (good boy - nice girl) orientation. Good behaviors are those that please or are approved by others. There is much emphasis on conformity and being "nice".

Stage 4:

Orientation toward authority (law and order). Focus is on authority or rules. It is right to do one's duty, show respect for authority, and maintain social order.

Postconventional Level

Stage 5:

Social-contract orientation. This stage has a utilitarian, legalistic tone. Correct behavior is defined in terms of standards agreed upon by society. Awareness of the relativism of personal values and the need for consensus is important.

Stage 6:

Universal ethical principle orientation. Morality is defined as a decision of conscience. Ethical principles are self-chosen, based on abstract concepts (e.g., the Golden Rule) rather than concrete rules (e.g., the Ten Commandments).

What is the Mind and What is the Body?

This problem has been termed the "Body-Mind Question" and a great amount of thought has been given to it over the centuries.

Is there just one thing? Is it all body or is it all mind?

According to Monistism its all the mind. Monistism advocated by Parmenides (5th century BC), and the rationalist (17th century) Baruch Spinoza argued that the body really is an illusion of the mind and that the body does not exist.

Others thought the mind and body are separate. Plato, Aristotle, Sankhya, the Yoga schools of Hinduism and the 17th century philosopher René Descartes, argued that the body and the mind are completely separate.

Can we find any scientific proof to answer this question?

Following The Light Signal Beyond the Eye

Light enters the eye and the rays are focused at the back of the retina by the lens and cornea. The image formed is up-side-down and reversed.

The figure above shows the eyes and optical neural pathways to the brain. In general the left visual field (shown in red) goes to the right side of the brain, and the right visual field (shown in dark green) goes to the left side of the brain.

Not shown is the dorsal pathway that goes towards the top of the brain and here "where" information is extracted. Also not shown is the ventral pathway that goes towards the bottom of the brain to the inferior temporal cortex where "what" information is extracted.

The main message here is that the light gets translated into an electro-chemical signal that is split up and goes to many different places in the brain. The image is broken into many pieces by the brain for processing.

Somehow the visual signal is put back together. This welding processing is not found by dissecting the brain. Somehow the visual fields are knitted back together. The physical world seems seamless as it mysteriously jumps into our consciousness. Nobody has the answer as to how this works, but it does. It is part of everyone's experience.

The Stack

According to my intuition and Abraham-Hicks we are both Non-Physical Beings and Physical Beings. There are groups of Non-Physical Beings that supply us with spirtitual insight. Our Experiencer experiences the Non-Physical aspects and our Thoughts and Emotions.

The Sensory Display produces the illusion of the world and produces the proximal model. The body (the brain and the nervous system) provides sensory pickup of the distal world and provides the processing for sensory display.

The Experiencer focuses on only ONE thing at a time. There is only one thought and usually only one emotion. When we try to listen to two conversations we jump from one to the other. We might hear our name in a crowed room of conversation, so at a lower level we can listen to many conversations, but at the conscious level we break it down and hear only one at a time.

The processing within the Sensory Pickup and Processing block takes perhaps 60 trillion synapses. The result of the conversion of data from Sensory Pickup and Processing to Sensory Display I call mental singularity.

The mental singularity is not observed by examination of the brain. Yet we experience it. There is no screen matrix for the optical nerves. The optical nerves go through out the brain. From this it seems that the Sensory Display requires another dimension beyond ordinary time and space.

We observe everything in the "Our Experiencer" box. If we just look at the brain we see nothing but a pink jelly substance.

The brain/mind is like a sheet of paper. The observer below (brain scientist) sees the blank side. The metaphysical observer, the ordinary observer experiences the top side

So What Happens When We Die?

We might also ask what happens before we are born. These questions refer to yet another question, "Does the soul exist?"

We must define what we mean by soul. For this writing lets consider that the soul is the witness, the observer, and the dreamer.

I think the idea of heaven and hell is probably not true, as being in hell forever is not something a kind god would do. Also to be in heaven when we are always in bliss reminds me of a drug state. Instead it seems reasonable that the soul has a mission. Could it be that our inspirations to music, new ideas, and inspiration could be influenced by non-physical beings.

One of the arguments for the non-existence of the soul is that when one is chemically put to sleep by drugs, the soul also goes to sleep. The soul is no longer observing.

One answer is to consider two computers. One computer can take another one down through by sending it a message to stop working, or by making the other computer very busy doing very little.

So the brain can make the soul go to sleep and not observe.

Since they are so tightly coupled, this is no surprise.

Simpletons and Brain Organization

The brain is very complex. To understand it we must assume that it has some type of organization. The question is an organization of made up of what?

Lets assume the brain at some level is divided into different types of processes. One processes might be listening for a particular word, or moving a finger, or remembering what shoes we are wearing.

Each process we can further assume is performed by "simpletons."

These simpletons are organized so that they do not overlap in abstraction level, therefore they must form a hierarchy. This is not just an organization chart, but a very complex system with parallel systems and many feedback loops. But probably we can assume that the upper layers inspect and control the lower layers.

The law of attraction says what you think about you attract. Thus went we activate a simpleton, the simpleton gains power and moves upwards to higher layers. One might be careful as to what they think about. For instance, if one thinks about sex too much, it is likely that a simpleton who does not see the big picture will get promoted to far.

Click here for a list of ideas with references to books.

Click here to continue to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

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1. Introduction

2. Distal and Proximal Worlds

3. Finding Your Soul (you are here)

4. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs