Mind as spirit, intellect as illumination: recovering the soul of thought in the evolution of consciousness
Mind as spirit, intellect as illumination: recovering the soul of thought in the evolution of consciousness
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Issue Date
2010
Authors
Brown, Jennifer E.
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Abstract
This is a study of the concept of the mind as spirit, intellect as illumination, and cognition as revelation. It looks to some of the world's major philosophical and religious traditions, both ancient and modern, Western and non-Western to investigate the meaning and nature of "mind as spirit" while at the same time accounting for cognitive scientific theories of the mind. In looking at the Logos in the pre-Socratic thinkers, the buddhi or discerning intellect in Indian and Buddhist thought, the Active Intellect (Sacred Intellect) in Avicenna's philosophy, the concept of Holy Wind or Holy Spirit in Navajo cosmology, and the suprasensible basis of cognition in Steiner's monism, I show that in these traditions (and perhaps many more) the mind or the intellect is conceived of as the spiritual faculty in the human capable of bridging the divide between the unreal and the real, darkness and light, man and God. In these accounts, the spiritual basis of thinking links the human to the cosmos and resurrects the Earth; the mind is light, life, breath, Being, love, and creation.
The purpose of the study is to revive, restore, and reintegrate a sense of the spiritual basis of the mind and thinkng into our vision of philosophy, science, and spiritual development; and to rethink oversimplified notions of East/West, body/mind, intuition/cognition, and feeling/thiniing that lie at the heart of a "new dualism" in which the fundamental problem of a mind/body split is simply reinforced from another equally unstable angle.
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Consciousness