What a piece of work is a man; Ancient views of human nature, part 2

It's interesting to note that in the last 75 years there his being in the West a considerable current returning to lure the American Buddhist idea man away from the idea of the unitary so interludes See idea of a consensus of numerous factors coming together. This view has been discussed by Bertrand Russell in various places and he says here he says that from this field human personality it does not follow that there is no simple self. It only follows that we cannot know whether there is or not and that the self except as a bundle of perceptions cannot enter into any part of our own knowledge. Well this is certainly for a moment hed thought about me in philosophy of what he was saying I think he would have completely agreed

with the progress that the man was a bundle. Of elements and to process Bertrand Russell was preceded in this by Hume. Now a very interesting fact that the ideas of Homer did not persist into classical times in Greece with three to four centuries after home as. It seemed to the Greek philosophers and to all thinking men in Greece. That there was a unitary so that it inhibited the body. The idea of the of the multiple causation the multiple factors which made up a

personality had given place to this idea of psyche imprisoned within the body. The recent scholarship has suggested that the reason. For this transition from the old idea of multiple loosely catering personality to the idea of the unitary so. The influence which produced this claim not from the oring interests used to be supposed but rather came from the north. From the city and from the shamanistic religion of the north. But the Greeks had founded their first. Colonies on the Black Sea in the seventh century B.C. and it come into contact with the Syrians who whose religion was the same as that which still persists in large parts of Central Asia and in Siberia other

shamanistic religion. There are other which did persist and it would be very recent here has been replaced by Marxism. And this idea of the unitary which came with the shamanistic ideas based upon the fact that the shamanistic religion depends really on the activities of these specially gifted people. Who performed feats of wrought in modern mediumistic literature travelling clairvoyance. In this respect we're quite different from the Beatles and prophetesses of Greece. So these were possessed by the God of the Delphic oracle. She set upon the tripod and was possessed she was. The word

enthusiasm of course which we use in our slightly different sense means literally having the Guardian say do you. And the prophet the God inside her and the God spoke through her. Well exactly. Something exactly contrary took place in the shamanistic religion. Summoning the guard as Sherman went into a mediumistic trance and went out and explored the external both on its mandate and its supernatural levels looking for. Effects here below and looking for the deities under hers. Obviously if this naturally leads to the conception of a unitary So if you can go out and wonder about the word there is something that goes out. You can't speak about a bundle of

188 not closely related factors going out you have to think of this unitary person each going out into the world and I don't think we have to discuss whether. Traveling clairvoyance effect or not the number of quite eminent philosophers have taken it seriously. The professor CDB wrote of Cambridge is prepared to envisage the reality of travelling to have some sort of in this country would I think professor who want to hurt. But with whether we consider there is an objectively reality to travel in clairvoyance doesn't really matter in so far as a subject. It certainly seems to be to the shy man himself who goes out. It certainly appears to be a reality even to the observers it appears to be a reality. They see the deathlike trance and when he comes back hear him talking

about adventures which he is head in other parts of and in unknown areas of other subjectively it seems to have a complete early to it. And another significant effect in relation to the later Greek thought. Previous existence is part of their power was due to the fact that they had been in previous learning and they could remember this and carried this over into their present existence. Syria now which is hailed by dogs and others to exercise the ideas exercised a very considerable influence on the development of Greek or similar of the philosophy I think of it. But the

interesting point is that these ideas were developed in ways which they were not developed in the original regions where shamanistic religion was practiced. For example the idea of. Detachable so. Democratized everybody had a detachable not merely the show and also the idea of reincarnation was a democratised everybody had had previous lives but this meant that the whole idea of reincarnation but entirely different in the hands of pi thing from what it had being in the shamanistic were in the shamanistic only these specially gifted people had had previous existences and this accounted for their part. But after all if everybody had had previous existences it followed that.

They were not being given extra power because in fact they had very little power they were miserable people and impotent and there was so that the reincarnation was not a special privilege. It was actually a punishment we get then the development in purgatory an ism. But the idea that the present life is the hill which we are suffering for our sins in a previous existence. Close of course to the Indian idea of karma. Nobody therefore is born innocent. We are all in the Greek phrase Panerai. From this point of view we get extreme Puritanism which are later Greek thought and which passes over into Christianity which keeps reappearing in Christian thought the same in

many ideas of the UK. The body of the fact that we are all born with original sin of a kind of purity and stress on asceticism. All this is fully developed before the Christian era comes up again and again in the history of Christian thought in spite of its profound difference from the. The original Hebrew ideas which after all were the basic source of Christianity. And here let me briefly about the Testament idea as a person the distinction is made between so and body the body is an essential part of the human personality and actually in the Old

Testament Hebrew there is no word for body as apart from so a sort of always together and one of the interesting features of the Testament and also even New Testament psychology constant reference to the constant use of logic to describe the psychological effects of the bowels of compassion. We get this phrase occurring again and again the phrase is constantly repeated in the bowels of compassion and meekness which constantly speaks about. Again another phrase which occurs very frequently in the Old Testament is the reign of the lowing kidneys again and again the the word is used in a psychological sense

realistic point of view because as we're finding more and more these physiological factors in the total human make up of a minute's importance I mean actually that we found that the dream of colossal importance in everything that happens to us that are many of the seeming possessions both for good and for evil are due to the pouring extra quantities of green lean or noradrenaline into the blood so that these things are interesting to see the kind of empirical intuition which the. Writers and thinkers perceiving one can conclude certainly

true but the appreciation of the. The rule played by your physiology and human personality I think prosody worth mentioning too that many of these ancient religions clinical substances other than those produced within the body were frequently used in religious rites. There was always this great mystery of the change of personality due to the ingestion of other drugs. The Greeks of course made use of alcohol in the in the human rights and there are indications in the Old Testament that an attempt was made. Schools are prophets who are not the respectable prophets to do the same thing in the Jewish

tradition and the subject is one of the greatest interest it is being treated by the printer. In a book called present which gives a complete account of all of the chemical methods used in the various religious traditions to bring about these changes. One has to correlate this rather materialistic view of personality and its relationship with the divine. One has to correlate it with Definitely logic or psychology which runs through so much of the Old Testament and New Testament religion. I would like to conclude with a few remarks on

some of the Oriental conceptions of human nature. The basic Indian conceptions which we find in Hindu is like a modified but not very much modified in Buddhism. I won't go into the psycho physiological details of Indian psychology which are extremely complicated because they first relate a kind of kind of occult physiology parallel with the ordinary physiology which we're beginning to discover have something in it. Subtle bodies and causal bodies which the Indians talk represent some kind of intuitive grasp of the fact that there are fields electrical fields of various kinds around the human body and that these fields may

play considerably more important but part in a psychological like a present image and this is something which I think the future will either confirm or deny. But I won't go into these things I will stress the most important. Psychological statement in the Hindu tradition which is summed up in the three portentous words Divine I see that meaning that the basic. Foundation of the human personality the command the pure ego as he's called in western philosophy is identical with the brown and with the basic principle of Divine Principle of all existence. This runs through and is carried over in a stated different form into

Buddhism. It represents I would say the great Oriental contribution to. Psychology or rather to what to whom what are Swami used to call Earth to ology the science of the self with the large. Very. Interesting fact about oriental philosophy was that it is not a primer it is peculiar to Western philosophy. Certainly is now and although I think it was less so in the remote parts is not speculative It is essentially practical. It is a kind of transcendental

operational ism it insists that if you do certain things certain states of mind will follow and the nature of these states of mind has to be explored. Speculative and the conclusions drawn from a speculative examination of these states of mind. The conclusion that has to be drawn is precisely that Thou art That. That there is ultimately a kind of identity between the deep self which lies so to say upstream from the phenomenal ego. There is an identity between their deep self and the ground of the word. And of course being repeated in the West we find it again and again

in the writings of the Western mystics. Always with the insistence on not merely metaphysical statement. It is the description of the state of mind which is a state of immense value which probably everybody is capable of which in some obscure way we all live with although we suppress it by our preoccupations with the immediate here and now there but that we are sufficiently aware of it to be moved by any account of it and even to be actually strike here with direct experience. I don't think I shall have occasion to mention this point of view again but I think it worth seeing here that this.

Conception of the fundamental religious experience there's no way I would say incompatible with the scientific attitude towards life. Simply the account of effect of a state of mind and which is regarded by those who have it in its cleaner a fullness of immense value either to accept the metaphysical explanation of it or not to accept the metaphysical explanation. But we are not free to deny the existence of the state of mind or the statements of those who have experienced the state of mind that it is. A practical There you are. When we look at the crazies in which

Oriental. Philosophy describes the state of mind we find for example in the Hindu religion the word Mox meaning liberation. Then we find in Buddhist literature the word Nirvana which is extremely difficult to give any adequate translation of what it means. Evidently practically the same thing as moch for both of these may be regarded as the simply as the operational name of. The state of mind as is described in the by the Christian mystics union with God in union with the imminent God of direct experience rather than as the transcendent god of inference. For Me To me this is a matter of the greatest

importance that there is this experiential form of religion which is in no way at all of us. I would say with either the facts of science or the scientific point of view but it is perfectly possible to maintain a religious attitude on this basis which is in fact an experimental basis without committing oneself to anything which would be at odds with the general Belton Shiela of our time. And I include this lecture with this thought that we have here something which is perfectly compatible I would say with either the Homeric Humean rest salient point of view about human

personality or mystic tonic Christian view. Both of them seem to me to be compatible with the existence of these states of mind and with their values and it is also it seems to me compatible with. It's tricky thing you stick a point if you know your point of view like the Buddhists which he was found mentally atheistic which you're not concerned anyhow with the problem of God's between is concerned with the problem of liberation and of immediate experience and final reference to the contribution of person psychologies closely Snick. Thank you. You've heard the first tape recorded lecture in a series delivered by all of us Huxley at Kresge

auditorium while he was Carnegie visiting professor of humanities at MIT. Next week the second lecture entitled The contemporary picture. The program was produced by WGBH Af-Am Boston for the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the N A B Radio Network.