When and Who Withdrew the Soul from Nature?

The philosophy of Rene Descartes in the seventeenth century also created a lot of the present confusion. Descartes said that “the whole of Nature is a machine; it is inanimate. In effect, he withdrew the soul from Nature, from all animals and plants, and from the human body as well. How the rational soul interacted with the machinery of the body was an utter mystery to Descartes and it’s still a mystery today, because today we still have the same theory. When Descartes made this division between the realms of matter and spirit, he established a new demarcation between science and religion, defining their territory. Science took the whole of nature, including the human body. All nature was secularized. The arts and religion took the soul, this ineffable something located in a small region of the head. In this way a modus Vivendi was established between science and religion. Science was concerned with the objective realm of facts, religion and the arts with the realm of values, aesthetics, morality, and belief.” (Fox 77-79).

Materialist philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, for example, try to exorcise the ghost from the machinery. But they find it very hard to convince people that they themselves are computerized automata. (Fox 78).

Due to some of these shallow and narrow thinkers, generations have been misguided and this also helped to give the false sense of self as the thinking mind. It is so sad to see many who still think highly of their intellectual abilities and mental supremacy and yet are suffering like paupers isolated from their soul’s higher purpose in life. Sad because they do not realize that their thinking conscious mind and subconscious mind make up only approximately 10% of their total human potential whereas their super-conscious mind or intuitive and creative capabilities make up 90% of their full potential.

“As science has turned its reifying light upon mysteries of the human mind, however, Descartes’ dualism (along with our own ‘folk psychology’) has come in for some rough treatment. Bolstered by the undeniable successes of three centuries of purely physical research, many philosophers and scientists now reject Descartes’ separation of mind and body, spirit and matter, as the concession to Christian piety that it surely was, and imagine that they have thereby erased the conceptual gulf between consciousness and the physical world.” (Harris 207-208).

To learn how to tap upon the 90% human potential of the Super Conscious Mind, contact Thomas Kwan.