New Thinking on Psychology - The Mind
By John Mace
New thinking on Psychology - The Mind
“My brethren, we can no more think about something without a mental image appearing than we
can live without breathing”.
(Nikhilananda, 1987, p. 214) Inspired Talks of Swami Vivekananda (1893). Ramakrishna
Vivekananda Center, New York.
Socrates is credited with saying, ‘Understanding begins with the definition of terms.’ To have any understanding of the mind, we need to be more knowledgeable about what it is. Therefore I will stick my neck out here and state that I am probably the first person in recorded history to actually define the mind, to state what it is and what it does. My definition is as follows.
The mind is an abstract and intangible entity whose only function is to create a mental image of what the person has their attention on. It has no weight, size, colour or form.
It should be noted that because the mind is totally abstract and intangible, it couldn’t be defined in materialistic terms, so that its function is an essential component of its definition. To elaborate on that definition:
The mind does not store knowledge, create emotions, rationalise or make decisions. Every function ever attributed to the mind is actually the province of the
being, so that everything previously written, taught, believed or said about the mind is false.
The following statement resonates with my definition.
A truth's initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn't the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn't flat. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. (Dresden James quotes, 2005)
No! I am not a raving lunatic, and neither are there raving lunatics among the thousands of clients who have benefited from the research and the hundreds who have
sent thank you letters, including the following from a German psychologist of many years’ experience, including postgraduate studies.
I am well into section three, reading it for the second time and want to compliment you on it. Your
discovery of negative identities and their subsequent handling are to my knowledge and understanding a
most creative “roundup” (roundup is not the correct word, but I cannot find a better one) of Freud and
Fritz Perls’s writings, teachings, systems and theories. The difference is that you not only round them up,
but also have finally found a way of dealing with and collapsing those problems they write about – in a
very user friendly and most effective manner.
Of course the difference is also that you have introduced the concept of Beings and Energy into the purely
psychological viewpoints of the others – which makes the Mace Energy Method unique.
I studied Psychology for nine years at a university, which puts its emphasis on Behavioural Therapy and
Psychodynamics. I also studied Gestalt Therapy at the Fritz Perls’s Institute in Germany, have studied
EMDR and gone into Gallo’s EDxTM, EFT, REMAP and have worked as a psychotherapist in all these methods for fifteen years, so know what I am talking about when I say that your MEM is a solution to most, if not all the issues a psychotherapist gets “troubled with” in his or her own practice.
To me its beauty lies not only in its simplicity, but also to an enormous degree in the fact that there is no
self-disclosure.
“When the student is ready the teacher will appear” – thank you for appearing at just the right moment!
Martina Becher
Exploring definitions of the mind
When you consider the mind’s totally abstract, totally intangible quality, the lack of a finite definition is perfectly understandable, for it is extremely difficult to define
something that has no substance. However, this does not change anything. We all know the mind exists from our own subjective reality, but it has no objective reality, so its nature is generally considered an enigma. My own research and case histories have thrown new light on the subject of the mind: what it is, what it is not, how it operates, and its purpose. For me, and the many who have benefitted from my modality, the mind is no longer an enigma.
The mind has been the subject of much writing and conjecture by philosophers for thousands of years. Millions of words ‘appear’ to be have been written about it. The word ‘appear’ is used advisedly, as very little, if anything at all, is ever written about the mind per se. However, when writings, teachings and beliefs are taken into account, there is an implication that this is the case, for whenever the subjects of non-optimum behaviour, emotional problems and emotional disorders are discussed, the term mental illness is used. Even though the word ‘mental’ means “of the mind” intriguingly,
Psychiatry treats “mental Illness” from a physical viewpoint.
To briefly digress from the mind, in certain scientific circles there is the idea that the brain has intellectual properties, that it is the brain that does the thinking and, in particular, the storing of knowledge. Our language is full of sayings that promote this concept, for example ‘She is very brainy’, or the rather derogatory ‘All brawn and no brain!’ The epitome of this theory is demonstrated by the preservation of the brains of
Einstein and other great thinkers for clinical study! This is the extreme of materialism, for it totally ignores the spiritual component of mankind and reduces sentient beings such as Einstein to material objects.
The most significant question materialists have been unable to answer relates to the ability of an individual to store prodigious amounts of knowledge and operate as an
intellectual, thinking, sentient, life form. The answer is simple; all the abilities assigned to the brain and for that the matter the mind, are the abilities of the Being, the Spirit, or using my nomenclature, Human Energy Unit. It has an infinite ability to store knowledge.
To put to rest any ideas that the brain has an intellectual ability, consider this: if you had the opportunity to compare the brain of a large ape with the brain of a human, you would find there is not much difference in size. Even if the human brain were twice the
size of that of an ape, you certainly could not equate the difference in size alone with the vast difference in the intelligence of the two species, yet the brains of both are composed of the same material – pinkish greyish coloured nervous tissue.
Logic puts the brain where it belongs, a ‘meat’ component of the body with no intellectual properties. The brain has a function, but it is certainly not an intellectual one. It is the centre of our nervous system, the source of our bodily or muscular functions, and rightly belongs in the field of physiology, but what activates the brain is another thing altogether.
Defining psychology and spirit
The false attribution of emotional and behavioural problems to the mind is reinforced when you consult a dictionary, for no finite definition of mind exists in any of the dictionaries at my disposal. The two-volume The World Book Dictionary gives 17 versions of ‘mind’, but refers to it as: ‘That which does’. A definition of that, however, is not provided! Another prestigious dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary, in almost as many versions, refers to it as: ‘the seat of intellect, the source of emotions...’ Another large dictionary, The Australian Oxford Dictionary, has similar versions, but once again does not define what it is, only what it is believed to do. The dictionaries talk about function, albeit erroneously, but not structure.
The suffix Ology refers to a branch of knowledge, and the word psyche is Greek for spirit or life. Thus psychology in its original and logical meaning referred to a study or
knowledge of the human spirit, and it remained thus until the middle of the nineteenth century.
In 1856, Wilhelm Wundt, a medical student, graduated from Heidelberg University and joined the staff in the psychology department, where he remained for 17 years.
Later, he created laboratories to study human behaviour and helped to give psychology a new definition. One of Wundt’s American students, James Mark Baldwin, is credited with introducing the definition by which it is now generally known, a ‘study of the mind’ or a ‘study of human behaviour’. Wundt apparently saw no point in engaging in and continuing the apparently endless discussion concerning the nature of the psyche.
Being of a more practical bent, he decided that behaviour was something that was quantifiable – you cannot see the mind or the spirit, but behaviour is very observable, so
it could be classified. His research seems to have ignored the psyche. What the source of human behaviour was attributed to before Wundt I do not know, but although probably a mystery, it is a fair guess that it was not attributed to the psyche, hence the
need for a new definition excluding that word.
It is very obvious that great confusion has always existed between the Mind and the Psyche. The German translation of the word ‘mind’ is Geist or Spirit, hence Wundt’s easy transition in thinking.
Thinking in pictures
This paper is going to be contentious in the extreme, but the truth is that the mind is an entity created to facilitate the game of life. In this regard it is indispensable. The
spiritual being does the thinking, stores knowledge and makes decisions, and the mind creates pictures to match the being’s thoughts. Here is an example of this vital function.
A person has a dream to build a holiday cottage, but the dream is a nebulous idea, without substance, until the person decides on location and structural details etc, at
which point the details are automatically envisaged. (Envisage; create a mental picture).
The examples are endless. Every invention starts out as a dream, a nebulous idea with no substance, but aimed at solving a problem of some kind, such as the Wright brothers’ dream of heavier than air flight, or Marconi’s dream of telegraphic communication.
The former saw birds in flight, but Marconi had only his dream, with, as far as I am aware, nothing tangible for inspiration. Apart from illustrating the mind’s vital role in the game of life, the above example also indicates the mind’s role in creating mental pictures of the spiritual being’s focus.
The mind, spirit and pictures
Spiritual beings in their native state have neither a body nor a mind. It appears that the mind is created spontaneously with the creation of the body, for it is as much a tool for playing a game in the physical universe as the body. You nearly got it right Mr Wundt,
but it is the mind that is devoid of self-determinism, not the spirit. The mind reacts to stimuli from the self-determined spirit. When a person’s body tells them that it is hungry, and their attention is focused on food, their mind creates a picture of food, but only as a response to the focus on food. That is precisely how the mind functions! It manifests pictures of whatever the being’s attention is focused on. If you say to someone ‘Think
about a football match,’ or ‘Think about going to the movies,’ these are perfect cues for the mind to manifest relevant pictures. Try the following additional examples.
Think of an elephant.
Think of a dentist.
Think of a friend.
Think of your bed.
Think of an apple.
In quick succession as you read, you will have created different mental images: pictures of an elephant, a dentist, your friend, your bed and an apple. You may consciously decide to focus your attention on something else, but initially your mind will respond by
creating the relevant pictures. It is apparent that the mind is devoid of self-determinism; it is a stimulus–response mechanism that follows the person’ attention.
The same result would have materialised, of course, if the instruction had been not to think about football or not to think about going to the movies. This highlights a very
important point: when told not to think of something, the knee jerk reaction is to think about it. To emphasise the point, do the following.
DO NOT think of an elephant.
DO NOT think of a dentist.
DO NOT think of a friend.
DO NOT think of your bed.
DO NOT think of an apple.
It is ironical that if you say ‘Do not think of ……’ the mind produces a picture of that something. Why? Because your attention has moved to that ‘something’! Logically, the mind produces that something to illustrate what not to think about. If, for example, a person is told, ‘Do not think about it,’ they will not create a mental image and will make the natural response, ‘Do not think about what?’ When told, ‘Do not think about your
bedroom,’ they will immediately create an image of their bedroom. Crazy I know, but then the mind, like a computer, cannot rationalise. It is an unthinking robot at the behest of the being. This illustrates and emphasises its function as a stimulus–response
mechanism.
My original conclusion involved the mind as a mechanism that thought in pictures, but that was just a step on the way. Further analysis, experience and research indicate that this is not so. If told, ‘Think about a football match,’ it is apparent that the instruction is
really, ‘you think about a football match.’ This un-stated word, you, is the crux of the realisation about the relationship between spirit and mind. Although, in any
conversation, it is you who is being addressed, this is never stated. The important point that is easily overlooked is that the person is talking to you, not your mind. The prime action is you, the spiritual being, focusing your attention on the football match. The
secondary action is the mind producing a relevant mental image, even if only with a nanosecond of delay, too short to be noticeable. It is not a case of, ‘Mind, think about
football,’ it is, ‘you, think about football.’
Each human body is unique and visible as a material object composed of bone and flesh. Each person’s mind is similarly unique, but invisible to outside observers.
Therefore, as the mind is invisible to others, it is not an external object. Given this, it is esoteric in the fullest sense – totally private and confidential. It is a subjective entity.
Although the mind is invisible and intangible, it nevertheless has the ability to create pictures, mental images that are observable, by the individual concerned and are thus subjective realities. We observe the mental images that our minds create.
Mind and monitor
We now must ask: what is the purpose of creating mental pictures? The answer to this question is important in understanding the fabulous and indispensable mechanism of the mind. Eiffel and his tower are an example of one of the mind’s uses, but to expand upon the concept of mental images, the desktop computer is a perfect tool.
As I sit here now, typing this manuscript, the computer monitor keeps a visual record of every word and every symbol, in fact the entire context of what I am composing, while at the same time recording it in the hard drive – the computer’s memory. If I did not
have the visual display of the monitor, I would have no indication of what has been stored in the memory or deleted. Until I printed it out I would only have my memory of the particular keys I pressed. To make this more real to those readers who use a computer, next time you write something, turn off the monitor and then continue writing! It would be blithely naïve to expect to make no mistakes during the initial writing, but they would not be apparent until the printout stage – which would make editing a veritable nightmare!
In a similar vein, imagine the difficulty encountered in creating a complicated computer program without the benefit of visualising it in the process of development. More pertinently, without the monitor, the facility of graphic computer displays would be non-existent. Mind is almost synonymous with monitor, although the other way around is probably more factual.
Both the spirit and the mind are invisible, which makes confusion between the two very understandable, but does not alter their function as separate entities.
Being totally abstract and intangible, the mind has no material component, yet has a material duplication in the monitor of a desktop computer. Additionally, both body and spirit also have their counterparts in that device. The following diagram indicates the duplication of mind, body and spirit.
In expanding upon the monitor/mind comparison, the first thing to be noted is that the mind stores no knowledge and the monitor stores no data. The monitor is inherently
blank, and without a connection to a computer program remains blank, even when connected to a power source. Any imagery it creates is derived from data in the hard
drive. According to my reasoning and research, the mind is also inherently blank, but creates imagery according to the information it receives from the being.
The word ‘memory’ refers to stored information, so it is obvious how the term was adopted as computer jargon. The hard drive stores all computer data and the spirit
stores all knowledge, hence the hard drive and the spirit are parallel. The keyboard parallels the body, for just as it activates stored hard-drive data, the body activates a
being’s knowledge.
The mind creates an image of whatever the person’s attention is focused on. It changes images as a direct consequence of a change of attention by the individual – in other words, it follows the being’s line of thought. Whenever the body’s sensors trigger the being’s knowledge, the mind produces an image of what has been accessed. Similarly, when the keyboard accesses data stored in the hard drive, the computer monitor
produces images to represent the data being accessed. The identical roles of the keyboard and the body need an in-depth explanation, for this is the salient, but not
obvious, point.
Remembering is the act of bringing knowledge into conscious recall. All recall is the result of tapping into knowledge, and the vehicle used is the body’s sensor. The body has innumerable sensors – sound, touch, smell, taste and sight being the major ones, but
I have seen a list of about 50. Fundamentally, a sensor is a detector, a detector of what is happening around or in the body; it makes a person aware of what is happening within their body as well as in their immediate environment. It is easy to forget that this is the basic function of bodily sensors.
The touch or tactile sensor gives a message to the brain, via nerve channels, that the body is in direct contact with something or, for example, that it detects some radiated
heat. The fingertips are very sensitive to texture, and a person with their eyes closed while fingering the texture or shape of something can easily recognise what it is. This, of course, only applies if the person has previously seen or felt the object in question – its various physical properties have been recorded as knowledge. An example of this is Braille, by which a blind person is able to read by using the sensors in the fingertips to
recognise the meaning of various small shapes. This allows the blind person to access information via the tactile senses rather than the visual senses. The result is that the person has acquired information, irrespective of the channel used.
Using the sight sensor as an example, a person is made aware of the distance of their body from some other object. Sitting on the edge of a very tall building, the person is made aware of how high they are, with the resultant desire or compulsion to hang on
tight if feeling apprehensive about heights. If this is the case, the sight sensor has triggered fear of heights, an example of secondary triggering.
The ears, as sound sensors, relay to the brain that there is something emanating sound waves and, from knowledge acquired, the source of the sound waves can be recognised. Every sensor triggers data in the person’s memory bank. On hearing a dog barking, for instance, the hearing sensor may trigger knowledge of what type of dog it is that can be heard. There is no need to go into different types of dog barks, but what has happened
is that stored knowledge has been accessed via the sound sensor.
Without mentioning other sensors, it is apparent that they all pass messages to the brain concerning the immediate environment, and there, in detail, is the explanation of the similarity between keyboard and body – each accesses memory/knowledge to produce
images.
The extent to which the erroneous understanding of the mind’s role has totally permeated our culture is evident in our language with phrases such as, ‘Mind over
matter,’ ‘Be mindful,’ ‘His mind is made up,’ ‘When I make up my mind.’ The fact, used in the fullest sense of the word, is that it is the being that is doing the deciding, not the mind. This indicates how much their relationship has been misunderstood; their independent roles and functions have been totally confused. Factually, the expression ‘When I make up my mind’ should be ’When I decide.’
The expression ‘my mind’ is very significant, for when it is analysed it will once and for all debunk the idea that Mind and Self are synonymous. When you say ‘my’ you are referring to yourself as an entity, and when you say ‘my mind’ you are claiming that there is another entity called your mind. You therefore cannot refute the fact that “you” and “your mind” are separate entities. Logic will also tell you that the possessor is senior
to, or superior to the possessed, and that ‘puts it in a nutshell’.
© John Mace. January 25, 2010
John Mace Websitewww.macemethod.com
To learn more you can purchase John Mace;s book Energy Over Mind Ebook for only $11.95 AUD at www.macetrainers.com
MEM is a total departure from conventional counseling, it does not involve any self–disclosure and requires few therapy sessions, which can even be carried out over the telephone or skpye
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