Mapping the World of Our Mind–Part One
The study of human nature has been—for much of human history—left to the scientist, the philosopher and to the cleric. Each has tried to discern who we are, what we are, and why we are, and yet not one of them has given us a means to explain the reason for our existence and the purpose of life. People want to know more about human behavior. They want to know if we are destined to have a meaningful beginning and ending to our lives, and whether or not there is a purpose that explains our temporary existence and our future. People also want to know why we live in a world contrasted by good and evil, and why they cannot arrive at solutions to the troubles of humankind. It is this questioning of our existence and the paradox of good and evil that has continually raised an important question. What is humanity? Now, it wasn’t long after people set out to conquer the globe that they began to examine the larger and smaller worlds. Through the methodology of science, people looked at the stars to map the heavens, and they began to measure the world that lies beneath the oceans and count the things that can’t be seen by the human eye alone. They also began carefully mapping the world of our mind. This meant more than knowing the geography of the brain. From the mapping of our thoughts came the formal study of psychology, which is just—in a general sense—the study of human nature, and a commonly accepted part of a modern education today. Consequently, it became the quest of psychology to take the lead in describing the function and the structure of human nature, and perhaps shed some light on the reason for our existence. But what has psychology given us? In a book published in 1895 by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, they described a therapy that they had used on a woman known by the pseudonym of “Anna O.” This woman had many symptoms ranging from physical health issues to hallucinations, among other problems. In the course of her “treatment” it was learned that some of her past experiences were linked to her present conditions, and they learned that by working through these past experiences, her symptoms went away, and her overall condition improved. This demonstrated the profound effect of the mind on the human body, and the treatment she received became the foundation and starting point for psychoanalysis. Now, although the focus of psychology has changed back and forth over the years from the biological to the psychological causes of mental illness, there is one thing that became certain, and that is that some human illnesses could be attributed to the way the mind worked, and to the way people used and stored their thoughts and memories. What then did Freud and other psychologists of the time really discover, or perhaps we should say rediscover about the human mind? Fundamentally, what Freud and other psychologists were looking at was the mechanics of the human mind from the materialistic and humanist point of view, and so what psychologists were finding in some cases was that some problems in human behavior could be resolved by exploring the way people think and store their thoughts, and by altering the condition of a person’s thoughts they could cure some mental health issues. What Freud and other psychologists also recognized was that there were some unique and important attributes of the human mind, two of which we will simply call thinking and thought, a notion that had long ago been entertained by Greek philosophers and the ancients of the Fertile Crescent. One is, in a sense, the creator of the other and distinct, and in another sense, they are absolutely understood to be the components of one mind and inseparable. Meaning that we cannot establish the existence of one without the other, which has in some measure been poetically summed in the words of King Solomon (Pro. 8:22-23). Now, these attributes of the mind give us the capability of relaying information back and forth. We commonly refer to this phenomenon today as “talking to ourselves,” which makes us particularly significant among all creatures on earth. Even King David was aware of this human ability when he wrote: “I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times. I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent search” (Ps. 77:5-6). Some people assume that David was speaking of the “heart” as the seat of a person’s emotions, but in this context David was referring to his thoughts, and the expression of his will regarding the direction of his life. In other words, by speaking of the “heart” he was saying that a person’s thoughts are pointed in a certain direction, and David used historical figures and events to consider his own direction, and so by his comment he admonishes us to consider the way our will is also directed. For in the works of Jeremiah we read that the heart of man can become wicked and deceitful, and thus our thoughts and their direction can—and certainly have—brought about a large portion of humanity’s ills and troubles and conflicts. Meaning that the thoughts of humankind appear to be continually influenced in a direction that is the opposite of the Creators thoughts, requiring us to commune with our own thoughts to examine if they are according to the will of God (Ps. 139:17; Eph. 2:1-6). However, what Freud and others also did was to cause us to explore our “feelings” in preference to our thinking in order to explore the “unconscious mind,” and in a way of speaking, this approach redefined our understanding of the soul. Today the word “feel” is nearly synonymous with “think,” and so we have come to believe that our minds should be ruled by feelings instead of properly guided thoughts, and the consequence is