The Pineal Gland — The “Seat of the Soul”?
After writing several articles on reincarnation and enlightenment, many readers asked me why I never mentioned the significance of the pineal gland — a small structure about the size of a pea, located in the middle of the brain. For centuries this gland has been thought of by occultists and spititual masters as the “seat of the soul” — a phrase made popular by Descartes (1662 AD).
Descartes was obsessed with understanding who we are. He questioned everything — even the notion that we can know ourselves. He observed that the senses can be fooled, that most of what we think we know is really illusion and finally struggled with the possibility that our own identity as individuals was also not real. But in the end he concluded that if it was possible to doubt our own existence, there had to be some “thing” that was capable of experiencing this doubt. And that thing was our true self.
His famous statement endures: Cogno ergo sum — I think, therefore I am.
“Although the soul is joined with the entire body, there is one part of the body [the pineal] in which it exercises its function more than elsewhere… [The pineal] is so suspended between the passages containing the animal spirits [guiding reason and carrying sensation and movement] that it can be moved by them…; and it carries this motion on to the soul … Then conversely, the body machine is so constituted that whenever the gland is moved in one way or another by the soul, or for that matter by any other cause, it pushes the animal spirits which surround it to the pores of the brain.” — Descartes
Today, with an understanding of computers, we might take issue with Descartes. That “thinking” process could be part of the circuitry of neurons, synapses and neurotransmitters that exist in our material brains.
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Every Day is Earth Day
2012-09-10 04:10:11
Source: http://www.riseearth.com/2012/09/the-pineal-gland-seat-of-soul.html
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