Foothills of the Soul: Fundamental to Understanding

Introduction

Foothills of the Soul

The Foundation of Understanding and the Gateway to Knowledge

Welcome to my version of reality in a less-than-kind world, where truth lies beneath the rubble of human debris and sometimes between the lines of history. After digging my way through the school of hard knocks and experiencing the pitfalls of life, I venture to share with you my observations of life. This is not a complicated journey but a foundation on which to build a road to further knowledge. There is a progression to accumulating knowledges. First is to know thyself and to read the empathy of others. Socrates was not the first to say Know thyself. In fact, it is posted on the frontispiece at the Temple of Delphi. However, Socrates is remembered for the motto to remind us of our soul.

I do not preach the gods, nor do I condemn them. Gods may be the only hope for many souls. Life was a very twisted journey long before there were gods and before humans for that matter. New species enter the world every day not to be discovered for centuries. Recently there was one the size of a whale being called the beak whale.

Our journey will be about species we do know, including human species. God may have created Earth in six days; however, it took Him the best part of four billion years to put a soul on it. God needed the help of many species to get someone like us. Our universe is still evolving, and so are the species.

Our journey will take place through a series of essays from stardust to Vincent Van Gogh painting stars. Again these essays are the foundation to advance future learning of understanding the world and ourselves.

Essay 1

Know Thyself

Socrates was the first to say that we have souls and perhaps go to heaven. Elin Kelsey is believed to have said, We came from star dust, and we shall return to star dust.² On the seventh day, God rested, and the dust settled. And should there be a speck of dust on your soul, surely it came from the beginning of time.

There are two schools of thought as to whether the mind and soul are one or they are separate. Socrates said:

I have not sought during my life to amass wealth and to adorn my body, but I have sought to adorn my soul with the jewels of wisdom, patience, and above all with a love of liberty.³

If those three things define who we are, indeed, we have souls; it is honesty toward oneself. The mind protects the soul from embarrassment and ridicule. A little white lie, so be it. That is survival. Without it, the human soul would be destroyed. Jesus remedied that situation with God’s forgiveness.

Hypocrisy is a human condition; we hear of it every day. Hypocrisy is just a bit of the foundation of understanding that the soul must look away from to protect itself. Socrates will speak in detail later. Rene Descartes’s genius would fall in line with hypocrisy of the human mind and soul: Masked, I shall advance.⁶ He shall advance under the mask of hypocrisy. Descartes most widely known quote is I think, therefore I am.

To say the mind wanders around in the brain may not be far from the truth. Our thoughts jump all over the place. The mind has been analyzed into three parts: perception, thought, and memory.⁷ If it were not for the perception of seeing, the brain would know extraordinarily little, say that of an amoeba (amoebas do not have brains). Perception takes place in the neocortex, as does thought. The memory bank is in the limbic portion of the brain stem. Thought must call upon memory; thought appears to be the process that wonders. Only the truth must be stored in our memory bank. Thought must sort out the truth to keep the memory clear so as not to get confused by a mind full of hearsay.

The mind begins formulating in the womb; the mind can move body parts and hear voices. That is why some parents play soft music so the infant can sing and dance when it is born, granted the singing is crying and the dancing is kicking. The mind does not know anything immediately; this is called critical realism.⁸ In fact, the mind knows nothing until the eye can see; that is physical realism.⁹

Physical realism is a branch of philosophy that distinguishes between the real world and the observable world. The real world cannot be observed and exist independent of human perception. That child mentioned above will not know the real world until he/she experiences it firsthand.¹⁰

The child’s first realism of knowing thyself is in the form of being hungry and the feeling of dirty diapers. Their source of satisfaction comes from knowing their mother, the one who nourishes the child’s needs. And finally, to independent reality, independent reality is one in which you create yourself with the help of your experiences in life,¹¹ and whereby the infant distinguishes a baby bottle from a toy. Clarence I. Lewis calls this pragmatic reality.¹² Pragmatic reality is understanding the practical solution to a realistic problem—in other words, common sense. Common sense is the foundation to intuition. Without common sense, intuition would be of little benefit.

The mind, like a child, struggles to walk. You could not teach geometry to this child.

Knowledge must be built on prior knowledge; we may teach the alphabet but not as a whole. The whole must be achieved by abstract learning. Abstract learning must be part of a whole. The senses to learning are seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. And what of intuition? There are thousands of quotes on intuition, so we cannot take that sixth sense lightly.

Roy T. Bennett says, You will never follow your inner voice until you clear up the doubts in your mind.¹³ That is why I say sort out the truth from hearsay. The man with a brain, Albert Einstein, said, I believe in intuition and inspiration. I sometimes feel I am right and I do not know that I am.¹⁴

Einstein speaks of inspiration; is that not the spirit of the soul? Aberjhani says, What a lover’s heart knows, let no man’s brain dispute.¹⁵ Dean Koontz says, Intuition has been described as the sense of the soul.¹⁶ Is that not what keeps us honest to ourselves? And is not the wrath of a woman, intuition? Athletes are inspired by the pep talk of a coach or the importance of a game and often play at a level far above what the team displayed in practice.

Introspection is a quality that the conscious mind can consider. Perception is the observation of the outer environment. Introspection is the observation of the inner environment sometimes ignored by the conscious mind. Introspection is awareness of hunger and all discomforts of the body, also emotion and joy. It is easy to see that, if we get too involved in outside environments, we ignore our inner self.

Empathy is a dictionary for the soul, to observe our inner self and monitor our treatment of self and others. Empathy is an extremely beneficial trait. Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman on empathy is something that I have studied and tried to improve on. My wife claims that I need to read the book again. However, empathy should be considered in any decision making of the mind. Consider it a profit-and-loss statement. As the saying goes, a wrong turn or slip of the tongue can get you in hot water. The understanding of empathy is a vaccine for emotional behavior. Some of us may require three shots.

C. I. Lewis makes note of ignorance of reality:

No two minds are alike, therefore everything relative is not sensed in the same way. However, in daily life this does not matter, it is like a couple going to a movie and seeing it in separate ways and yet both enjoyed the movie.¹⁷

People see greens in different shades and shades in different hues.

Now that we have seen the movie from five feet, if we were to view everything from five feet, we would be no judge of any other distance. It is the experience of other distances that make things relative and in good judgment. When two scientists are ignorant of reality and marking out a map to Mars, the outcome will be total disaster, but it might make for a good movie.

The next concept is confusing, but I will make it simple. First know that empirical knowledge is knowing that fire is hot. It takes some time to learn to ride a bicycle.¹⁸ Once learned, that is empirical knowledge. It will take the same knowledge to learn the next concept. C.I. Lewis speaks on ignorance of reality: Our experience of reality is not given to us in experience but is constructed by us from data of the senses through acts of interpretation.¹⁹ Learn to read a map and take a vacation; one ignorance of reality is removed.

We can perceive, we can think, and we can remember. These are three functions of the mind that we can readily control while psychoanalyzing ourselves. We can analyze by using the six senses, counting intuition. We can analyze willpower, imagination, belief, desire, intentions, emotions, and pain. Ideas can only exist in the mind; ideas are brought about by imagination. Imagination exists nowhere else but in idle thinking. Idle thinking brings thoughts into focus. The mind is in two places: the limbic²⁰ and the neocortex.²¹ Now you see why the mind might wander and speculate as billions of neurons, are creating a magnetic field between them. Note, that I said speculate, meaning it is more philosophy than science. Daydreaming is an imagination working overtime, and midnight dreams much the same. Sometimes called naive realism, imagination is a good pastime for the idle and a framework for the more creative.

Perception is the original source of our consciousness, we do not have to think that we are conscious, we do not have to remember that we are conscious. Thought is only a unit of time. Thoughts last for only moments. The perceived world is the foundation of all rationality, all values, and all existence.²² This is as Maurice M. Ponty sees it.

Francis H. Bradley says knowledge precipitates in perception and memory. This, of course, is judged by thought.²³ Knowledge must be judged for truth by observation,