Chapter 4 MENTAL BODY – What happens if you cross a viper with a hedgehog? – One and a half meters of barbed wire. A children’s riddle
The mental body is the fourth and intermediate between the three higher and three lower bodies; therefore, in the organism it carries not only its own, so to speak, personal loads, but also special communicative functions, connecting the upper and lower groups of levels of this seven-storey building. In the spirit of D. Andreiev, the aggregate of the atmic, buddhic and causal bodies can be called the subtle sheath; then the astral, etheric and physical together constitute the dense sheath. There is a certain analogy between the dense and subtle sheaths: in particular, the atmic body is in many ways similar to the astral, the buddhic to the etheric, and the causal to the physical (see more in the following chapters). Calling the mental body briefly “mental”, we obtain the division of the organism shown in Fig. 4.1.
Subtle Sheath
Atmic body
Buddhic body
Causal body
Mental
Mental body
Dense Sheath
Astral body
Etheric body
Physical body
Fig. 4.1 The first threefold structure of the organism
If we call the etheric and physical bodies together the dense sheath, the buddhic and atmic the higher, and the aggregate of the astral, mental and causal bodies the middle (social) body, we obtain the threefold structure of the organism shown in Fig. 4.2.
Higher Body (Soul)
Atmic body
Buddhic body
Middle (Social) Body
Causal body
Mental body
Astral body
Dense Body
Etheric body
Fig. 4.2 The second threefold structure of the organism
The activity of the mental body is perceived by a person as the process of thinking, not necessarily logical or even coherent: this is any change of mental images, regardless of how constructive and conscious it is. The mental images themselves are objective perceptions of thoughtforms—distinct objects existing independently of the person in the mental plane of the subtle world. Mental energy is capable of assembling several thoughtforms into one, like construction work, disassembling complex thoughtforms into their constituent parts, and creating new ones by viewing them from different angles—all done through “left-hemisphere” thinking. In addition, a person is capable of associative (“right-hemisphere”) thinking: when a thoughtform similar to the given one appears in the field of mental vision, but is not strictly defined by it; it is also possible to create radically new thoughtforms, though this happens rarely. The thinking process as a whole is a certain work, partly consisting in searching the mental plane for appropriate thoughtforms, ready-made constructions, and starting points for associations, and partly in creating some large thoughtform or mental construction (idea, concept, theory) that currently suits—or does not suit—the person.
Subjectively, that is, from the perspective of internal changes, thinking is the process of transformation of the mental body; for example, having built a certain structure in the mental plane (i.e., in the external world), a person sometimes feels how unusual clarity suddenly arises in their thoughts, as if in a cluttered room order has been established: the floor and windows have been washed, dust wiped away, and furniture rearranged. This is exactly what happens with a certain area of the mental body when a person correctly understands a complex situation or grasps a difficult problem, etc. External and internal work always proceed in parallel—this, of course, applies to the mental body as well. Often thinking occurs unconsciously or semi-consciously, and then the person is unaware of either the nature of internal changes in the mental body or the subject of their efforts in the mental plane, although some work is happening both there and here, and the person feels it indirectly, for example, through a sense of inner preoccupation—they don’t want to think about anything serious, receiving angry “busy, do not disturb” signals. It is precisely this subconscious thinking that is primary; the conscious “reasoning” and associative sequences perceived by a person are merely superficial products or, more precisely, traces of mental meditations occurring in ways completely unknown to modern science.
The prevailing opinion is that Aristotelian logic lies at the foundation of “correct” thinking; however, in reality, all expressions used in ordinary reasoning, even in mathematical proofs—such as “if,” “then,” “therefore,” and other logical connections—are more ornamental in nature than actual indicators of adherence to the laws of logic. Mathematicians themselves do not deny this, contenting themselves with a certain generally accepted level of “plausibility” within the mathematical egregore, which allows them to avoid most contradictions (though not all). However, the laws of formal logic are often practically inapplicable by themselves, which should greatly trouble admirers of “precise” discursive thinking. The author will limit himself to one well-known example. According to the rules of formal logic, the statements “A implies B” and “Not-B implies not-A” are equivalent, meaning that if the first is true, the second is also true, and vice versa. Imagine we need to verify the truth of the following statement: “All leopards are striped.” Following the mentioned rule, the given statement is true or false simultaneously with the statement “Everything that is not striped is not a leopard.” Studying the first statement, we would have to go to the zoo, and at the appropriate cage we would quickly convince ourselves of its falsity. As for the second statement, checking its truth could begin at home, continue at work, and after some time, with a very high degree of certainty, convince us that it is true: indeed, neither the table, nor the chair, nor the kettle in the kitchen, nor a large number of unstriped objects encountered are leopards! Thank God! If the millionth unstriped object turns out to be a leopard by chance, it could boldly be attributed to an experimental error. Here we have a paradox: the first of two equivalent statements is false, while the second is true. A logician would dismiss the described paradox indifferently, stating that logic is one thing, and life is another, and the former should be applied to the latter with intelligence, not formally. A physicist would note that each problem must be studied in essence, and if it’s about leopards, one should consider them, not everything else, even such a respectable object as one’s own navel. Both of these points, of course, are valid, but neither resolves the posed problem: can formal logic be considered one of the foundations of constructive practical thinking—since the paradox described above deprives it of this possibility.
Here is another example showing that the relationship between logic and life is not so simple, and that the culture of thinking is more intuitive than we tend to believe. What is the opposite of this statement? It seems very simple: if the statement is that A implies B, then the reverse is formulated as: B implies A. As they say, sailors have no questions. But let us try to formulate the theorem reverse to the Pythagorean theorem. So, the main statement: In a right-angled triangle, the sum of the squares of the sides adjacent to the right angle equals the square of the third side. What would the reverse statement look like? The author offers two versions: 1. If in a triangle the square of the third side equals the sum of the squares of the first and second sides, then the angle between the latter is right; 2. If somewhere the sum of the squares of something and something else equals the square of some third quantity, it is a right-angled triangle. And here the issue is not that statement (1) is true and (2) is not; the question is this: why does the operation of reversing implication (logical consequence), which seems absolutely unambiguous, clear, and obvious, allow such strong variations when moving to specific examples, even not yet life-related, but still purely mathematical ones? No less doubt is raised by double implication: if A1 implies A2, and A2 implies A3, then A1 implies A3. There is an empirical observation: the longer a person justifies themselves, the more doubtful their justifications become. Logical chains of five links or more generally do not seem convincing, even if each individual implication raises no doubts: “Is A1 true? – Yes.” “Does A2 follow from A1? – It follows.” “Does A3 unquestionably follow from A2, and A4 from A3? – It follows.” “Therefore, A4 is true? – Not sure… can’t it be simpler, shorter, more convincing?”
The holographic and generally any holistic approach to the world makes the concept of causality problematic, since everything is connected with everything, and therefore every phenomenon can be viewed as a direct or indirect cause of any other. Thus, formal-logical constructions are always only approximations, whose limits must be established from external, content-based (i.e., directly related to the essence of the matter) considerations. What then is this incomprehensible essence of the matter? The answer is unlikely to surprise the reader: it is a fragment of the causal plane with which the person is currently engaged. In other words: a mental construction—a model or reasoning—is meaningful only when it relates to some causal object: an event, phenomenon, etc., which directs the course of mental meditation, the result of which will be a mental image, i.e., a certain representation of the causal object. The search for a mental image can be conducted in any way: gradually assembling it from logical bricks, kaleidoscopically changing whole associative gestalts, or in a combined manner: both ways; the important thing is that the person constantly feels the causal “essence” (“physical meaning”) of the phenomenon and orients themselves accordingly. This idea can be formulated in a much less pleasant way for a “freely thinking” person: every mental meditation should have causal sanction; in other words, the mental body should not (except in special critical modes) go beyond the causal. This is a much stricter limitation than K. Prutkov’s advice: “Think only about what your understanding allows you to think about. Indeed: not knowing the Iroquois language, can you make any judgment on this subject that would not be groundless and absurd?” In addition to this sound advice, one could say: think only about the subjects and events of your life that clearly require it; and the justification for your reasoning will be only in the case that they shed new light on what is happening to you; all the rest of your mental exercises merely clutter the mental plane and pollute your own mental body. A clever thought, often openly deceitful, constantly tries to grasp itself, like a snake swallowing itself starting from the tail—and never succeeds. It is precisely to the mental plane that the concepts of truth and falsehood belong, which do not exist on other planes, and this needs to be understood. Neither an ideal, nor a goal, nor an event, nor an emotion, nor a movement can be true or false—they simply exist. At the same time, they are reflected in a certain way in a person’s mental body: they somehow make sense of their own life—ideals, goals, actions, etc.—and the results of this sense-making can undergo transformations characteristic of mental structures, for example, evaluations and classifications. “And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10). From the perspective of the modern reader, the word “saw” in the last phrase refers to the mental plane, as what follows is an evaluation: “good” (and, following the logic of the 20th century, it could have been, on the contrary, “bad”). The historical reading of the same phrase would elevate it to the causal plane, the poetic to the buddhic, and the religious to the atmic, and in all these readings the word “good” is perceived not as a logical bit of information, i.e., the opposite of “bad,” but as an independent concept with rich inner meaning. Without claiming linguistic completeness, the word “good” in relation to different planes can be interpreted, for example, as follows: atmic meaning—harmonious or harmonizing mission; buddhic meaning—value clearly corresponding to the mission and bringing one closer to its fulfillment; causal meaning—an event successfully combining the main life programs of a person. However, the word “saw” may refer not only to the mental but also to the atmic, buddhic, and causal planes, so the reading of this biblical verse is not unambiguous; however, the word “called” in its first sentence clearly indicates (as does the rest of the content of Genesis) the atmic plane, because to name means to define the main outlines of fate and mission. Therefore, the mental reading in this case is clearly insufficient and leads to a strong distortion of the meaning of the text, which, of course, is not evaluative in nature.
A good writer and a conscientious reader always at least subconsciously track the subtle plane on which the narrative unfolds, since the meaning of words essentially depends on it. Let us consider as an example the following beginning of a rural story:
“How good,” thought Vasily, barely waking up and sweetly stretching on the wooden cot that dangerously creaked beneath him. Slanting rays of the recently risen sun barely penetrated through the closed shutters and open windows of the five-walled hut, brightly illuminating the brown-streaked dresser and two emerald half-liter bottles standing on it: one empty, the other barely started. “There will be something to sober up with.”
In this entire text, there is a gross stylistic error. The hero is depicted on the etheric plane, while the word “thought” belongs to the mental, creating an unpleasant feeling of dissonance in the reader and a sense of unprofessionalism in the critic. It would be much more adequate to use instead of “thought” some etheric expression, for example: “How good,” something sang inside Vasily, who had just barely woken up…” etc. However, the expression “something sang inside” also allows an astral interpretation, especially if it concerns the heroine. Generally, writers of atheistic orientation often see the truth of life in the etheric and physical planes, forgetting that heroes and readers still live predominantly in the causal, and their souls reside entirely in the buddhic and atmic.
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Ordinary logic—what in everyday life is called common sense and in science is called sound reasoning—does not at all reduce to formal-logical syllogisms. These are certain rules, quite difficult to describe precisely, but a cultured person instinctively learns them and tries, wherever possible, to strictly follow them; in cases when this fails, they become inwardly distressed and outwardly admit the imperfection of their logic, hoping later to find a way to correct the situation. However, it is noticeable that these rules are much more related not to the internal laws of the mental plane, but to its agreement with the causal. In other words, you may not be particularly logical, but it will be forgiven if you speak about the essence of the matter, and it is evident that you understand it and are trying to adequately express it in mental constructions. At the same time, the logic of events, i.e., the karma of the causal plane, is much more complex and qualitatively different from the logic (laws) of the mental plane—so all reasonings and models of events are always cruder than the events themselves—this is well known to any engineer who models some technological process with equations, or a storyteller who tries to accurately convey an event. Therefore, there are many different symbolic systems and logics, i.e., rules for manipulating symbols, and in some cases one is more convenient, in others another, but the mental plane itself is multidimensional, meaning that different logics simultaneously exist within it, often incompatible and contradicting each other. A typical example is so-called vector optimization—a characteristic problem arising when attempting mental modeling of a causal flow.
Consider, for example, a housewife going to the market with the aim of spending her available sum in the best possible way. The word “best” refers to the mental plane and implies a certain criterion; there are several of them. First, different family members (“independent experts”) have different opinions about the value of products: one likes strawberries, another peanuts, and a third dried apricots. Second, the housewife herself would like the food to be filling, calorie-rich, vitamin-rich, and biologically active—here are at least four more criteria. No compromises in the form of weighted sums of evaluations, deeply doubtful in themselves, can be introduced here, since the housewife’s preferences cannot be described numerically. (In response to the question: “Which hair color in women do you prefer?” one young man stated: “I like blondes and brunettes in a ratio of 2:1.” However, it would be extremely naive to expect such precision in evaluations from a family mother regarding the priority of beets versus turnips in household management.) This problem arises also in major affairs, for example, balancing the state budget, and mental methods of solving it are just as ineffective. Thus: the mental plane is fundamentally multidimensional, and the concepts of priority, truth, and falsehood exist only within rather narrow symbolic systems such as mathematical logic or arithmetic, which have no direct relation to reality and the causal plane (to the latter belongs such a procedure as decision-making). Therefore, one can speak of laws or rules of thinking only conditionally, i.e., always limiting oneself to a certain mental egregore, but not claiming the plane as a whole.
Immanuel Kant claimed that the laws of logic, the concepts of space and numbers in a person are a priori, i.e., not the result of their direct experience. This can be interpreted as the existence of a connection between the mental egregore of humanity (“noosphere”) and corresponding fragments of the World Mind—yet there are also other, no less remarkable fragments. Laws are strict limitations, better not to violate, as unpleasantness may occur—but if absolutely necessary, one has to take this risk. Just as a professional thief looks at the criminal code, a mathematician looks at logic, a physicist at mathematics, an engineer at physics, and a housewife who bought a kitchen blender at its instruction manual. Of course, it’s better to learn and follow the rules, but if it doesn’t work or there’s no time, maybe it will do somehow. In other words: the strength, clarity, and persuasiveness of thinking are primarily related to its adequacy, i.e., the level of correspondence satisfying the consumer of the mental model to the causal original. In this process, whether the author of the mental model uses formal logic or associative-imagery thinking is irrelevant: neither one nor the other adds or diminishes certainty; control functions, by the way, are equally inherent in both logical-discursive and associative thinking—otherwise, one can notice the absence of logic, or the inadequacy of a holistic image, when it clearly feels “not right” or “not similar,” though it may be hard to say exactly why. “Well, brother, you’ve gone too far,” “you’ve wandered into the wrong steppe”—typical responses of the right hemisphere in reaction to gross errors in thinking of any type, including logical ones.
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Modern scientific thinking is not adapted at all to the holographic paradigm, which, in the author’s opinion, should be assimilated in the most diverse spheres in the coming decades—otherwise, humanity will not be able to emerge from the global dead end in which it found itself by the end of the 20th century CE. This paradigm proposes viewing the world as symbolically reflected in any of its objects, requiring significant changes in the methodology of the scientific approach: many assumptions that seemed self-evident and raised no objections for the scholar of the 18th–20th centuries become doubtful and even completely unacceptable. Moreover, it turns out that many symbolisms which science conveniently uses, priding itself on this, contain absolutely unacceptable underlying assumptions that are “silently understood,” often grossly distorting or completely devaluing research results. The author does not claim serious criticism and limits himself to certain remarks and wishes, partially reflecting, as he believes, the spirit of future science.
Mathematics. At the foundation of modern mathematics lies Georg Cantor’s set-theoretic concept, which fundamentally contradicts holographic views. In mathematics, a set is understood as a collection (aggregate) of certain objects called its elements, regarding which it is assumed that they are unambiguously identified (i.e., clearly distinguished from each other) and somehow separated from the rest of the conceivable world, i.e., there is a certain rule allowing one to precisely say whether any object is an element of a given set. This definition presupposes something like prison order: there is a prison (set) and a set of prisoners (elements), placed in solitary cells (identification). The holographic approach requires that the prison itself be symbolically represented in each prisoner: for example, he must have its plan, on which the names of all prisoners are indicated in their cells, and additionally, his own cell is marked with a star. Then set A, consisting of elements a, b, c, which in set theory is denoted as A = {a, b, c}, would look much richer: A = {a/{a*, b, c}, b/{a, b*, c}, c/{a, b, c*}}—(the slash symbolizes the plan of the set existing within the element). Further, the theory introduces the concepts of union and intersection of sets—the union of two sets is the set consisting of elements belonging to at least one of these sets, and the intersection is the set consisting of elements belonging to both sets—and it is silently assumed that these operations are always “correct,” i.e., any sets can be “united” and “intersected.” It is interesting how the school principal would react to the teacher’s proposal to combine the second and tenth grades and conduct a joint lesson in native language and chemistry? Obviously, there must be some grounds for performing these operations, arising from the essence of the matter. The properties of the union cannot entirely follow from the properties of the sets being united, but must contain something new, reflecting the concepts of synthesis and meditation; the intersection, meanwhile, must remember the sets that generated it, i.e., the set {a, b} ∩ {a, c} according to Cantor, consisting of one element {a}, should at the very least preserve the memory of its “parents” {a, b} and {a, c}, and upon closer examination look, for example, like this: {a/{a, b} ∩ {a, c}} (here the slash symbolizes prehistory). Thus, we can identify the following main principles to which mental concepts and theories should conform:
a) The principle of sanctioning: any action requires a special permit;
b) The principle of memory: every action preserves in its result the memory of all operations (i.e., the members of the operation);
c) The principle of backlash: the result of an action is never uniquely determined and may vary depending on circumstances; this principle, in a slightly different formulation, sounds like this:
d) The principle of side effect: every action always has unexpected consequences, which may go unnoticed, but are precisely these that are of greatest interest to the researcher;
e) The principle of sequential unfolding: the part always contains information about the whole, but extracting it requires several stages, each consuming a certain amount of mental energy.
If a concept lacks these five properties, its objects are difficult to use for modeling causal flows; this, in particular, is related to the crisis of theoretical physics of our century, which still dares not part with determinism in the broad sense of the word, especially in its foundation, i.e., in mathematics and logic.
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Arithmetic of natural numbers (1, 2, 3… etc.) seemingly lacks qualities b)–d); for example, 1+1=2 and there is no “backlash” (say, sometimes 2.01, sometimes 1.97) here, since integers. However, here we encounter a qualitatively different situation: mental modeling not of the causal, but of the buddhic and atmic planes, where backlash and side effects arise at the phases of transition from plane to plane. As one great mathematician said, God created man and natural numbers, and the rest is the work of human hands. In the language of this treatise, this can be interpreted as follows. Natural numbers 1, 2, 3… are natural symbols of the atmic plane, and various arithmetic formulas, say, 1+2+3=6, symbolize atmic plots, i.e., general programs of world (and human) development. In this sense, occult arithmetic is divine, and numbers and formulas of this kind can be worshipped as ideals (naturally, each person should have their own formula, gradually refined throughout their life). Descending to the mental plane, the formulas themselves acquire a completely different meaning, and numbers model the counting of homogeneous objects and measurement, where fractions appear. Mental “grounding” (descent three bodies down) is symbolized by dimensionality in the case of counting homogeneous objects and approximation in the case of measurements; from these “weights” backlash arises. Thus, the formulas “1 orange + 2 oranges = 3 oranges” and “1.019 + 2.031 = 3.05” are mental analogs-variations of the Great Equality “1 + 2 = 3” of the atmic plane. The atmic plane itself cannot be an object of mental manipulations; it can only be contemplated in awe, seeking more or less suitable, but always consciously crude and imperfect rational representations for its elements and plots. Then mental images of atmic objects arise in the mental-atmic body, and from the former one can attempt to build various constructions, but the laws of the mental plane still differ greatly from the atmic, so the higher laws of being are poorly grasped by rational mind (this is approximately as difficult as expressing a complex thought through gestures, i.e., movements of the physical body). Each plane correlates well with adjacent ones—but unauthorized jumps through one floor, let alone two, are always risky and inefficient, as they are accompanied by strong distortions.
Physics. As is known, physics is the science of the properties of inanimate (non-living) matter, a concept absent in the holographic paradigm: if there is even one living being, then the entire world and any of its objects contain some “life”—which, however, may be deeply hidden, as, for example, in a paving stone or a rock. Now let us consider several important questions:
1. Does studying and mentally modeling the world affect its characteristics?
2. Does the observer’s observation affect physical processes?
3. Are there limitations on conducting thought experiments?
4. Does the personality of the scientist influence the character of the “objective” laws they discover?
5. Do the phenomena studied by the scientist and their effects influence his personal fate, or is nature active in relation to the process of its mental modeling?
A physicist of the last two or three centuries would confidently answer “No” to all these questions; the answer of the Age of Aquarius will rather be positive, meaning a qualitative restructuring of the ethics of scientific research—even in the most neutral areas unrelated to military interests. The question of the ethics of scientific cognition is much sharper than one might think. For the normal functioning of the organism—both of a person and of humanity as a whole—agreement between its mental body and causal and astral bodies is necessary, and if the mental body in some places exceeds the causal, and in others leaves it bare and constantly tears away from it, then there can be no talk of the health of the organism as a whole. The fantastic distortions of fate in modern civilization are primarily associated with the hypertrophy and grotesqueness of humanity’s mental body; onto it were additionally imposed absolutely alien functions of the entire subtle sheath, i.e., the atmic, buddhic, and causal bodies. Thought forms ideals, life positions, and controls events—so believes the collective subconscious, and vainly seeks a person (president) or a small group (Politburo, government, Supreme Council, etc.) capable of generating such thought. As a result of such efforts, the mental-atmic, mental-buddhic, and mental-causal bodies come to the center of attention, in which a person begins to manipulate using mental methods well-developed for entirely different purposes and oriented toward qualitatively different problems. Here a double mistake occurs, more precisely, an incorrect substitution. First, the higher bodies (subtle sheath) are by no means identical to their mental images: for example, what a person does (causal body) is often weakly related to how they consciously or unconsciously imagine it (mental-causal body); second, ordinary connections can rarely be applied to the objects of mental-causal, mental-buddhic, and mental-atmic bodies. An event is finer and more detailed than its mental image; the laws of the causal flow are only roughly modeled by the laws of thinking, so events are always in some way unexpected, logically contradictory, and unpredictable. From events, one can draw conclusions, more precisely, interpret them in various ways (Gemini stream), but mentally processing the results of this interpretation, we obtain a purely mental product, which has a highly indirect relation to the causal plane. And all practitioners (from robbers to ministers) well know that, having planned events in the mental body, one can expect any surprises when attempting their realization (Capricorn stream). If a child has lost faith, it is futile to ask: “Why did you do this?” The stream of events does not obey mental logic, in which there is only the concept of a clear goal and means of achieving it. Stuffing a live cat into a garbage chute is no less logical than going to work every morning, or on Sunday to a demonstration for or against abortion, although homo mentalicus may seem otherwise. A person does what they do due to pressure from the causal stream (or, in other terminology, their own causal body), not because of some logical “reasons.” Another matter is that sometimes it is possible to translate (via Capricorn) a carefully created mental image into the causal body, but how exactly it changes in the process and what real events occur as a result is usually unknown to the person. To better understand the difference between the laws of the causal and mental-causal bodies, imagine a long river rapid with plenty of stones, shallows, powerful eddies, and steep rebound waves on the inner side of bends—such is the causal body. The scheme of this rapid, depicted in a tourist route description, resembles the mental-causal body, clearly showing where it is better to pass and which landmarks to follow. However, after plotting the route, one still needs to travel it, and here the beginner tourist-canoeist awaits a mass of surprises. It turns out that the canoe has inertia (sometimes bad, sometimes very good) and stability, and water has viscosity and temperature, especially felt when it floods the knees of an unlucky paddler, threatening in the near future to test the buoyancy not only of the vessel but also of himself…
