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ment of my body (including my brain)
with its genetic inheritance and i ts
evolutionary odgin . . . bu t this theory
( evolution} fails completcly to providc
me with an explanation of my origin
as the person
l
experience myself to be
with my self-awareness and uniquc
personality. (Sir John Eccles,
Tbe
Humau Miud)
The human brain cannot possibly
account for the human mind. A non–
physical component is needed. There
is no other way.
Aie Tbere "lmmortal Souls"?
Materialism is wrong. But does that
magically cause immortal souls to
exist? T hat would be faulty Jogic. Just
because Russian Communism is wrong,
must German Nazism have been
right?
(Far
right, yes - politically!
Absol11tely
right, no!)
The world has arbitrarily estab–
lished materialism and the immortality
of the souJ as the basic alternatives to
answer the question: "What is man ?"
So cowed meo have dutifully accepted
one side or the other - and then
firmly dedicated themselves to wipe
out the "lunacy" of the opposing side.
Jt
is an interesting spectacle- much
Jike the public games in ancient Rome
- it amuses the people and dulls their
minds.
But could it be possible that
both
choices are wrong? (See the accom–
panying boxes. ) Could both the dog–
ma of materialism and the doctrine of
immortal souls be bedfellows in a
diabolically deceptive plot- a plot
designed to keep man bickering about
nothing, argumentatively off balance,
and apart from the truth?
Could there be a
third
dimension
to the mind-body problem?
Non-Physical Real ity
Human beings are creatures of ex–
tremes. And so when modero man
disposed of immortal souls, he quite
predictably jumped to the opposite
extreme and denied everything non –
physical. But again - that's faulty
Iogic.
Biblical history abounds with
oc–
currences and prophecies which defy
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an entirely physical explanation: the
plagues on Egypt; Ezekiel's clear, in–
advance description of the specific
manner of Tyre's destruction; Daniel's
astoundingly intricate, prophetic de–
lineation of the successive histories of
the Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian,
and Roman empires - and on and on.
Non-physical reality can also be sub–
stantiated by the thousands of people
who have reported all sorts of super–
natural phenomena -
happenings
which defy the physical laws of space,
time, mass and energy - telepathy,
clairvoyance, psychokinesis, miraculous
healings, etc. Surely many of these
tales are pure fabrications, woven by
kooks, fakes, crackpots and charlatans;
many others can be classified as illu–
sions, hallucinations, self-deceptions
and coincidences.
But are they
al/?
It seems rationally
implausible. Remernber, we don't need
a "democratic" decision, where more
than
50%
of all supernatural phenom–
ena must be valid to prove the exis–
tence of aoy non-physical reality.
If
only
one
event could not be totally
accouoted for by physical means, our
point would be fully made!
Then there are the rigorously
scientific studies of Dr.
J.
B. Rhine
and his colleagues in extrasensory per–
ception (ESP). Statistical reliability,
experimental honesty and psychologi–
cal rigor are the touchstones of these
pioneering investigations. Of course,
there are sorne ESP researchers - no–
tably the Russians - whose ideological
bias necessitates a physical explanation
for psychic phenomena. However, Dr.
Rhine has shown that ESP operates at
the same leve! of significance when the
parameters of mass, space and time
are greatly varied. And since mass,
space and time are the boundary char–
acteristics of the physical world -
and since ESP is completely indepen–
dent of all three - Dr. Rhioe con–
eludes:
There simply is no expL-tnation bascd
on physical principies that will do ...
no hypothesis which could explain
ESP phenomcna as a whole on a physi–
cal basis has been offered .. . (and} the
most devoted physicalist finds himself
in the sloughs of insuperable intellec–
rual difficulty.
T he Spiri t in Man
The non-physical is real. It exists.
And the human brain must have a
non-physical component to transform
it into the human mind.
But what
/S
this "non-physical
mind-component"? It is
not
the
fabled immortal soul. But what is
it? How does it work? What happens
to it when you die?
To avoid needless speculation, we
will label this non-physical mind com–
ponent
"the spirit
in
man" -
using
the word "spirit" in a non-restrictive
sense, only meaning something dif–
ferent from the physical, without any
other connotation implied.
The spirit in man, then, is that
essence which imparts human mind
power to physical brain tissue. It is
the means by which man exercises his
promised "dominion" over all other
creatures (Gen.
l
:26).
The spirit in man is
not
a soul;
it
has absol11tely no comciomneu apart
from the brai11.
Job speaks of such a
spirit: "... it is a spirit in man ... that
giveth them understanding." (Job
32:8, Jewish Pub. Soc.) Paul asks,
"What human being can understand
the thoughts of a man except [by
meaos of] the spirit of man which is
in him" (1 Cor. 2:11, Moffatt and
KJV). This simply states that self–
consciousness - the awareness of
thoughts, not just the thoughts them–
selves - is generated by the spirit in
man.
Zechariah shows that the Eterna!
God of Israel "formeth the spirit of
man within him" (Zech. 12:1). No
immortal soul here - the "spirit of
man" and the "him" are separate en–
tities, with the former located
"ruithin"
the latter. Paul confirms that this
"spirit of man" is
"in
him" (1 Cor.
2:11). This does
not
say that man
is
a spirit, but rather that this "spirit" is
located in the man.
If
a man swal–
lows a marble, that marble would be
in him. Does that make the man a
marble? Perhaps the man has "lost his
PLAIN TRUTH
June
1972