| Speculation (On Dualism)  “What
but a Soul could have the wit To build me up for
Sin so fit?” (From
Andrew
Marvell’s ‘A
Dialogue between the Soul
and the Body') The brain, this squabby, fatty, fibrous mess encased inside the nutshell of the brain, assays the stars, confines electrons in a micro-chip, assesses aeons from the very birth of time, devises sick and vile atrocities and soils our planet home with a ravenous greed. This fungal growth, this watery cauliflower, conceals our gelid hopes, congealed desires, chained daemons which erupt in odious, scabrous violence, or sublimate to shine in music, arts and aspirations near divine, lighting our passage through this vale of fears. Those brainy minds, the quantum physicists, inform us that an act of consciousness creates from energy a solid mass, transmogrifies the waves to particles and thus constructs our gross material world: refer to Schroedinger – his famous pussy cat. If consciousness creates the physical, it surely also conjures up the brain, along with nutty skull, flesh, blood and bones, then consciousness must rule, OK? But wherein does this consciousness reside? It cannot be the brain itself – for why? For matter is inanimate, inert; cannot create itself, and must obey the motivation, activation of a mind. Is mind synonymous with consciousness, therefore? If so, the both must surely be some form of immaterial entity endowed with power to create, make manifest a whole material universe by turning energy to mass. But how, then, does a lump, a thing, become inspired with all that energy, the force of life which animates the smallest mite; the tiger, microbe, or the whale, and makes in spring green leaves unfurl and flowers bloom? What is this force, if not the force of mind, a universal consciousness in which, perhaps, we share, each one in our small part? The answer lies within the heart. Malcolm Matthews |
