All in the body
By Mark Vernon on Thursday, November 24 2011, 15:30 - In the news - Permalink
I was fascinated by Dr Kenneth Heaton's research into Shakespeare making deep connections between the physical and the emotional - and wondering whether doctors might learn a lot about their patients' emotional wellbeing by attending to their physical state; partly because I recently came across Shakespeare's Entrails by David Hillman.
Hillman discusses Shakespeare's 'visceral knowledge' - knowledge experienced in the body, as well as of the body. In the Bard, entrails are a locus of subjectivity and otherness, belief and doubt. He argues that Shakespeare lived at the beginning of the modern period, which has become such a somatically precarious age, what with mind/body splits.
Further, our language of the body has become muted by familiarity. When we say, 'on the one hand and on the other', or talk of 'venting our spleens', it feels like mere metaphor. We've become disconnected from our own experience, tending to spirit away the body, as if bodily references were just a gloss on mental life. Psychic interiority has become separable from the interior of the body. There's been a process of 'excarnation', already well underway by the end of 16th century.
Perhaps it's only now turning around...
Comments
Your statement, “Psychic interiority has become separable from the interior of the body,” is demonstrated quite extensively at the link below:
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-...
[excerpt] Acclaimed psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent experimental brain research to reveal that the differences between the brain’s two hemispheres are profound. The left hemisphere is detail-oriented, prefers mechanisms to living things, and is inclined to self-interest. It misunderstands whatever is not explicit, lacks empathy and is unreasonably certain of itself, whereas the right hemisphere has greater breadth, flexibility and generosity, but lacks certainty. It is vital that the two hemispheres work together, but McGilchrist argues that the left hemisphere is increasingly taking precedence in the modern world, resulting in a society where a rigid and bureaucratic obsession with structure and self-interest hold sway - with potentially disastrous consequences.[end excerpt]
Though Julian James' old book "The Origin of Consciousness" is controversial, your post reminded me of my old read. James says that we hallucinated across the hemispheres of the brain prior to our present consciousness. And that Homers texts are mistranslated and instead of leaving viseral reports, the translators bring modern ideas of my anger, my fear etc. Such sense of self and such ownership of emotions or even of those sort of emotions may have been less familiar to our ancestors than we imagine.
"Isn't it amazing, friends! Isn't it astounding! — the extent to which mindfulness immersed in the body, when developed & pursued, is said by the Blessed One who knows, who sees — the worthy one, rightly self-awakened — to be of great fruit & great benefit."
(Kayagata-sati Sutta)
I read this with a sense that there is a disconnection. I thought much of todays idea about mind is that it is an epiphenomina to the physical - just brain states. This is not my position by the way.
So we are emphasising the value of rational mind and rational behaviour at the same time as saying mind itself does not exist. Or have I missed something?
MO - I think the problem with 'brain-centrism' is that it really circumvents the body, seeing the body as just a sensory input system for the brain's central processor - akin to the keyboard for a computer; and as a life-support system for the brain - akin to a power source. It's brain-in-a-vat stuff. But this embodied cognition is saying that you couldn't have consciousness without the consciousness of the body, entirely both/and.
It is interesting to reflect on the fact that the brain-body-mind system is one undivided system, which can nevertheless become unbalanced or lop-sided at any level of its activities: whether that of the right or left brain hemispheres as McGilchrist points out, or in the importance given to brain processing power over the consciousness of the senses (Mark Vernon).
As truly holistic representatives of the species are rare, we don't really know what a fully co-ordinated, fully integrated human being would look like: every culture has its own implicit biass one way or the other, whether towards the somatic or the emotional or the rational aspects of functioning. I'm sure Shakespeare had his implicit biasses too, and the Buddha also may have, but it is difficult to know exactly what they were, because our interpretations of these people are filtered through the biasses of our own personality and culture.
Could the inner meaning of the word "individual" (meaning "undivided") be an instant of integration (or realisation) of the whole brain-body-mind in one moment, in which the mind steps beyond its cultural or personal or even somatic biasses, an acts creatively as a whole? And is this possible for us?
Which would mean that most of us are not individuals at all! (Until we are, that is).
Mark and James, this remarkable book - The Enlightenment of the Whole Body - describes what an undivided fully Awake human being would like. Such is the latent potential of every human being. It was published in 1978.
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/EWB/ew...
Hasn't a study just come out that shows people in apparent vegetative states may be more conscious than imagined? I think consciousness without consciousness of the body can happen -- isn't that what dreaming does? Or am I missing something?
I get that signals from your body influence this moment's consciousness but we aren't confusing momentary consciousness with "self"?
Actually, I am in over my head on this conversation. Ooops, I used a body word to describe my consciousness. :-)
PS -- is there no way to have comments e-mailed to us on this blog?
Thanks again for more thoughtful comments.
What is means to be an individual? Wow! Something about 'gathering up the fragments' feels important to me. There's the oft quoted comment of St Iraneaus too, 'Man fully alive is the glory of God'. And I'm sure the collective dimension is important too: to be an individual is precisely not to be isolated.
Not sure about emailing comments. Will have a look...
Good luck figuring out how to activate e-mail notifications. It will greatly increase communication on the blog.
Glad that the west is catching uo with these ideas again. You may like to look at a book called "The Meaning Of Illness" By Groddeck who inspired Freud. All good wishes to you. Marie Costello